I NTERDISCIPLIN A RY LECT URE SERI ES I N L I NGUISTICS
Stressing the wrong syllAble in Spanish
Dr. José Ignacio Hualde
University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign
Friday, December 9, 2016, 3:00 PM
Ortega Reading Room (335)
In this presentation Dr. Hualde will report on work that
he has conducted over the past few years on the
phenomenon of rhetorical stress in Spanish and other
cases where prosodic prominence is placed on a
lexically unstressed syllable. Some of the main findings
are the following: Rhetorical stress is realized as a
high tone on a syllable before the lexical stress,
generally, either the initial syllable or two syllables
before the lexical stress. Stress clash is not avoided in
this phenomenon and occasionally there is more than
one rhetorical stress in a single word. The lexicallystressed syllable retains durational cues, so that there
is no neutralization of lexical stress patterns.
Rhetorical stress does not appear to contribute to
better recollection; rather, its function may be to
mark discourse as authoritative.
Interpreter provided upon request.
This event is free and open to the public. For more
info, contact [email protected] or visit
laii.unm.edu/events.
Linguistics & the High Desert Linguistics Society • Spanish & Portuguese • Latin American & Iberian Institute