Relations between prosody and syntax: a pilot study on the use of pauses in Granada speech phrasing

Abstract

This pilot study presents the first results of a prosodic analysis in the Spanish of Granada (Spain) and tests a methodology based on the guide proposed for PRESEEA by Velásquez Upegui and Martín Butragueño. Using a sample of twelve informants from the PRESEEA-Granada corpus, the interface between prosody and syntax is studied to determine which social and linguistic variables (syntactic and prosodic) may influence the use of pauses as potential prosodic boundary delimiters. Statistical analysis concludes that age and statement length seem to significantly affect the presence or absence of pauses in the phrasing of the speech of Granada. Furthermore, there are indications that certain bivalent structures are favoured for pause interpolation.