Stressed Clitic Pronouns in Two Spanish Varieties: A perception study

• Published in: Catalan journal of linguistics Vol. 18; p. 105
• Main Authors: Colantoni, Laura, Hualde, Jose-Ignacio, Icardo Isasi, Ane
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Barcelona Universitat Autonoma de Barcelona, Servei de Publicacions 01-01-2019; Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
• Subjects: Accentuation; Argentine Spanish; Clitics; Language varieties; prominence; Pronouns; Prosodic units; Romance languages; secondary stress; Sound change; Spanish language; Spanish phonology; Speech perception; Stress; stress perception; Tense; Verbs; Argentina
• DOI: 10.5565/rev/catjl.260
• EISSN: 2014-9719
• ISSN: 1695-6885

Clitic elements are prosodically attached to another phonological word. As such, they do not carry their own stress. In general, Spanish non-prepositional object pronouns (e. g. me/te/le/lo/se) meet the definition of clitic, whether preposed (proclitic) or postposed (enclitic) to the verb. Nevertheless, in several Romance varieties, including some Spanish varieties, the stress may surface on the clitic in verb+clitic(s) groups. We refer to this phenomenon as Enclitic Stress Shift (ESS). In this paper, we report on the perception of ESS by Spanish speakers from Argentina and Spain and explore the acoustic dimensions that may affect this perception. The discussion includes comparisons with other Romance languages and implications for sound change, such as the changes in stress patterns in the development of future and conditional tenses.