NUCLEUS PLACEMENT IN ENGLISH AND SPANISH: A PILOT STUDY OF PATTERNS OF INTERFERENCE 1

(In Lewis, J. Windsor (ed.) (1995) Studies in General and English Phonetics: Essays in Honour of Professor J. D. OConnor. London & New York: Routledge. Pp 255-265.)

1. INTRODUCTION My starting-point will be the assumption that intonation involves choices in three different areas, viz. division into intonation groups, location of the nuclear accent, and choice of tune (Halliday, 1967: 18; Cruttenden, 1986: 35). In my particular experience as teacher of English prosodies to Spanish-speaking students, I am among those who believe that mistakes in nucleus placement are responsible for more serious problems of interference than mistakes in the choice of tune. Experimental evidence to prove one or the other position has to my knowledge not yet been presented. The problem of nucleus placement was taken up by the two most representative treatments of British intonation addressed to the EFL audience and also the two most widely used in Latin-American universities i.e. Kingdon (1958), and OConnor and Arnold (1973), but both left important questions unanswered when it came to explaining cases of deaccenting. For instance, the page-and-a-half long account by OConnor and Arnold (1973: 5-7) on the varying degrees of importance contributed by words was certainly insufficient for the reader to understand why practically half the approximately thirty word-groups containing at least one lexical item in dialogue 1 (at p. 275) have an early nucleus, as in the opening exchange: (1) Did you see OTHELlo on television last night? OConnor and Arnolds massive corpus provides countless examples of deaccenting which their theory of accent does not account for.

On the other hand, descriptions of nucleus placement in Spanish (e.g. Bolinger, 1954-5; Contreras, 1976; Suer, 1982; Silva-Corvaln, 1983), which might help explain the origin of some of our students mistakes in English, contain crucial omissions, the most important being the fact that given information in Spanish can be, and in fact normally is, accented, as simple observation of facts attests. Kingdons long residence in Spanish-speaking countries allowed him to realize that Spanish speakers have a habit of repeating a kinetic stress on a word that has already had one in the same utterance, a practice that is relatively rare in English, e.g. (2) Trabaja de noche en el cine, y hoy no hay cine. (1958: 264-5). In order to obtain some kind of experimental evidence of differences and similarities between the English and Spanish sentence accent systems, I conducted a series of five tests with two groups of Spanish-speaking subjects of Chilean nationality: one made up of linguistically naive informants, and another of speakers with both practical and theoretical knowledge of English and Spanish phonetics. This paper is an account of the last of these tests. 2. APPROACH, OBJECTIVES AND METHOD This test was devised with the specific aim of looking into the exceptions to the Last Lexical Item (LLI) rule (Halliday, 1967: 22) in English utterances in both broad and narrow focus (Ladd, 1980: 74ff.; Cruttenden, 1986: 81ff.). The research set out to provide empirical evidence, in the form of recordings, concerning how many of the exceptions analysed constitute a problem area in the teaching of spoken English to Spanish speakers. Errors in nucleus placement in this test would reveal that English and Spanish are governed by different, language-specific rules. The first assumption is that in Spanish the nuclear accent tends to fall on the last content word not only of constituents and sentences in broad focus, but also very often of sentences which are in narrow focus, as is the case of utterances containing given information. The second assumption is that in English the LLI rule does not apply to 2

constituents and sentences in narrow focus and does not always apply in utterances in broad focus. There were nine areas under research. The number in parentheses indicates the number of times each area was tested: 1 final adverbial (3); 2 non-pronominal subject+intransitive predicate (4); 3 final vocative (3); 4 restrictive relative clause in definite NP (2); 5 (final) given information (5); 6 post-modifying infinitive clause (2); 7 softening phrases (3); 8 object of general reference (3); and 9 reporting clauses (3).2 In the main, the test postulates the hypothesis that the exceptions to the LLI rule in utterances in broad and narrow focus constitute a problem area for Spanish-speaking students, and in the second place, that Spanish speakers will experience more difficulty when dealing with accentual patterns which are more unlike the corresponding Spanish ones. This tendency will manifest itself in wrong nucleus placement in comparable contexts. To design the test, it was considered advisable to resort to conversational exchanges which provided not only a suitable compilation and random distribution of the areas listed above, but also realistic, communicative contexts. Eighteen mini-dialogues were written and then given to five native speakers to read and record in order to test their validity. So as to limit the scope of the investigation, a homogeneous group of students able to take the test under similar conditions was chosen. The group consisted of a random selection of 35 subjects from a total of 48 Chilean students of English who had done a course covering the theory and practice of word and sentence accent as part of a teacher-training course. The test was given to the students in a written format for them to read aloud and record on tape after five minutes of prereading. The complete version of the test is given in the appendix. 3. RESULTS Table 1 summarises individual results, showing total number of readings, number of correct and incorrect readings, and corresponding percentages:

Problem area

Number of correct patterns Number of incorrect patterns and percentage and percentage __________________________________________________________________________________

Total readings

adverbial

105

34

32.4%

71

67.6%

_____________________________________________________________________ subject + intransitive predicate 140 22 15.7% 118 84.3% _____________________________________________________________________ final vocative 105 94 89.5% 11 10.5% _____________________________________________________________________ relative clause in definite NP 70 16 22.9% 54 77.1% _____________________________________________________________________ given information 175 69 39.4% 106 60.6% _____________________________________________________________________ post-modifying infinitive clause 70 38 54.3% 32 45.7% _____________________________________________________________________ softening phrase 105 83 79.0% 22 21.0% _____________________________________________________________________ object of general reference 105 27 25.7% 78 74.3% _____________________________________________________________________ reporting clause 105 87 82.9% 18 17.1% _____________________________________________________________________ Table 1 Individual results

The figures in Table 1 reveal the existence of two clearly distinct tendencies concerning subjects performance: the first group comprises final vocatives, softening phrases, and reporting clauses, all of which score in the region of 7989.5 per cent correct nucleus placement, and the second group contains the remainder, which ranges between 15.7 and 54.3 per cent. 4

4. DISCUSSION The two hypotheses put forward proved to be correct. As predicted, Spanish speakers

performed fairly well in those areas where the nuclear accent patterns are comparable in English and Spanish, but had varying degrees of difficulty in those areas where usage diverges. The discussion will be organised around these two areas.

4.1 Final vocatives, reporting clauses, softening phrases Final vocatives comprised the area where informants reached the highest scores. This is not surprising, since Spanish final vocatives like English are normally appended as tails to the nuclear accent whenever they function as true, colourless vocatives.3 All three examples in the test translate fairly literally into Spanish, e.g. (3) How do you like this BLOUSE, honey? (4) Te gusta esta BLUsa, amor? Reporting clauses and softening phrases in Spanish behave in quite a similar way to their English counterparts. This accounts for the high proportion of correct answers, as exemplified by (5)(8): (5) What did you SAY?, Bill asked John. (6) Qu diJISte?, Bill le pregunt a John. (7) Shell give it back on MONday, I think. (8) Lo va a devolver el LUnes, creo. The relatively few cases of wrong nucleus placement appeared to be due to a hesitant, slow reading. Failure to produce an immediate, smooth link between both clauses often caused the intrusion of an artificially long pause, which in turn called for an extra pitch movement on the wrong word. This was judged as an additional nuclear accent.

4.2 The remainder The area of postmodifying infinitive clauses was one in which students still scored over 50 per cent correct, with a much higher score for (9) than for (10): (9) I have some BOOKS to read. (10) I still have some TOPics to cover. The structure in (9) does not translate neatly into Spanish, which prefers the reverse word order, with both the argument and the nuclear accent in final position, as in (11). On the other hand, (10) translates more fluently (as in (12)), and it is therefore significant that there were more errors on this item: (11) Tengo que leer algunos LIbros. (12) Me quedan algunos temas por cuBRIR. The last five areas proved to be the most difficult ones. In this group, correct nucleus placement ranged approximately between 23 and 40 per cent. They were, in descending order of incorrectness: given information, final adverbial, object of general reference, relative clause in definite NP, and subject + intransitive predicate. In the case of givenness, the lowest results (between 37 and 23 per cent) were the following, (13), which contains inferred information (Prince, 1981): (13) (A: They say that most of the subjects are too difficult to cope with.) B: I KNEW that would happen. The English text has a perfect word-for-word Spanish translation, and the pattern fluctuates in Spanish between accent on the last lexical item (14) and early nucleus (15), a version which conveys Bs greater involvement: (14) Yo saBIa que eso iba a pa SAR. (15) Yo sa BIa que eso iba a pasar.

Example (16), where informants also scored 37 per cent correct, shows the reluctance Spanish speakers feel to alter the accentual pattern of prefixed antonyms in order to highlight the contrast, as can be seen in the normal Spanish version (17): (16) A: I think German people are FRIENDly. B: Come on! For me theyre absolutely UNfriendly! (17) A: Yo creo que los alemanes son amisTOsos. B: Qu? Para m son totalmente inamisTOsos. The lowest score (23 per cent correct answers) corresponds to example (18), which involves shifting the accent onto a function word. The normal Spanish version (19) prefers a repeated accent on the last lexical item atrasados (late): (18) (A: But were already LATE.) B: I dont care if we ARE late. (19) (A: Pero si ya estamos atraSAdos.) B: No me importa si estamos atraSAdos. Students performance on final adverbials was dissimilar. Whereas item (20) was correctly read by almost 70 per cent of the informants, item (24) barely reached 6 per cent. The Spanish version of the first one may have a number of possibilities, ranging from a pattern similar to English, as in (21), to a nuclear adverbial, of either place or time, as in (22) and (23): (20) Its rather HOT in here today. (21) Hace caLOR hoy da aqu. (22) Hace caLOR hoy da aQUI. (23) Hace caLOR aqu hoy DIa. The low results obtained for the second item (24) can be found in the interference of the 7

Spanish version (25), where together (juntos) would normally take an accent. Practically all mistakes consisted in making together nuclear, rather than the last, time adverbial, as in (26), which is probably a marked version in Spanish, since it reinforces the immediateness of the action: (24) We went SHOPping together the other day. (25) Estuvimos comprando JUNtos el otro da. (26) Estuvimos comprando juntos el otro DIa. Objects of general reference constituted an area where informants reached consistently low percentages, in that they tended to give them nuclear accent, as a result of Spanish interference. The highest score was for the item in (27), with 40 per cent correct answers, but the other two did not get more than 20 per cent each. The item in (29) does not have a direct translation into Spanish because the structures are not completely parallel. The normal Spanish versions for the other two are provided in (28) and (31): (27) She must have DROPPED something. (28) Se le debe haber cado ALgo. (29) Hes OUT somewhere. (30) Lets ASK somebody. (31) Preguntmosle a ALguien. The next most difficult area was that of final relative clauses, with a final score of just under 23 per cent. Item (32) scored 9 correct answers, and (34) only 7 out of 35, respectively. Both translations are the neutral, unmarked Spanish versions, the accentual patterns of which were misused by the informants in 77 per cent of the cases: (32) You live opposite the PUB we used to go to. (33) T vives frente al bar donde solamos IR. (34) Wheres that SWEATer I gave you? 8

(35) Dnde est ese suter que te regaLE? Non-pronominal subject + intransitive predicate (i.e. the so-called event sentences) was the area where the group of 35 Spanish-speaking students of English obtained the lowest results: out of a total number of 140 readings, correct answers hardly reached 16 per cent. In most cases informants applied the LLI rule of accentuation, thus making the intransitive verb nuclear, or in item (37), the final adverb. The target sentences are (36)(39): (36) I think we need the WINdow open. (37) The ROBinsons are coming tonight. (38) My CAR broke down. (39) My WATCH has stopped. The corresponding Spanish versions would normally have a different word order, with the nuclear subject in final position, e.g. (40) Creo que necesitamos abrir la venTAna. (41) Esta noche vienen los RObinsons. (42) Se me ech a perder el AUto. (43) Se me par el reLOJ. A second-best option for a simple event sentence such as (42) and (43) would consist of a similar word order to the English versions, e.g. (44) El auto se me ech a perDER. (45) El reloj se me paRO.

5. CONCLUSIONS The following main conclusions emerge from the above results: (i) Spanish-speaking students of English who may have become fairly proficient in the segmental aspects of the target language normally transfer nucleus placement rules from their 9

mother tongue into English. (ii) English and Spanish differ in the way they signal given information intonationally. In Spanish, unlike English, information already present in the discourse can be accented. A shift of accent to convey givenness is possible in Spanish, but not necessary. (The results obtained in the other tests support this view, but they have no place in the present discussion). (iii) English and Spanish differ in the way they consider arguments and predicates in their capacity as accent carriers. In Spanish, unlike English, neither arguments nor predicates take prevalence in carrying nuclear accent. This would probably have become more evident if the present discussion had taken into account other accents apart from the nucleus. (iv) Closely connected with the above, in Spanish there is a strong tendency for final lexical items to carry the nuclear accent (irrespective of whether they are nouns or verbs, etc.). Word order adjustments are sometimes necessary to allow this rule to come into operation, but the implications of this variable have not been considered here. (v) There tend to be no significant differences between English and Spanish in the accentual treatment of final vocatives, reporting clauses, and softening phrases. The accentual tendencies of final adverbials seem to vary, and further research is necessary. (vi) Whereas English prefers to leave objects of general reference unaccented in certain contexts, Spanish does not. (More evidence was found in the other tests, but that is beyond the scope of this discussion). The patterns of interference discussed here have certainly not exhausted the issue. Important differences will emerge from the analysis of other patterns in narrow focus, such as English sentences with the nuclear accents on operators and prepositions, and others which have not attracted the linguists attention but still puzzle the advanced students, such as (46) and (47), which Spanish learners will normally accent as in (48) and (49), respectively: (46) Ive only BEEN here once. (47) Ive only BROUGHT a thin sweater. 10

(48) Ive ONly been here ONCE. (49) Ive ONly brought a thin SWEATer. Since the publication of the first edition of Intonation of Colloquial English (1961), a lot of discussion has been carried out on nucleus placement that urgently needs to be fed into EFL textbooks. This practical handbook, as it was subtitled, has been widely discussed and criticised and has in recent years been out of print. Yet the fact that thirty years later no one has taken up the challenge of replacing it with anything that will compare with the richness and variety of its corpus and the exhaustiveness of its drills is perhaps the most eloquent tribute we could pay to its authors.

NOTES

This article is based on one of a series of tests conducted as part of a Ph.D. thesis for the University of Manchester. For detailed treatments of these notions, under these or different names, see Halliday (1970), Crystal (1975), Schmerling (1976), Ladd (1980), Bing (1985), Cruttenden (1986), Gussenhoven (1986) and Faber (1987).

There exists (at least in Chilean Spanish) a type of vocative which can take the nuclear accent. This occurs when the speaker feels the need to establish a close relationship with the hearer. Similar types seem to occur in other varieties of Spanish.

REFERENCES

Bing, J. M. (1985). Aspects of English Prosody. New York & London: Garland Publ. Inc. Bolinger, D. B. (1954-55). Meaningful word order in Spanish. Boletn de Filologa (Universidad de Chile), 8, 45-56. Reprinted in J. H. Silverman, (ed.) (1991), Essays on Spanish: Words and Grammar. Newark, DE: Juan de la Cuesta, 218-230. Contreras, H. (1976). A Theory of Word Order with Special Reference to Spanish. 11

Amsterdam: North-Holland Publ. Co. Cruttenden, A. (1986). Intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Crystal, D. (1975). Prosodic features and linguistic theory. In D. Crystal, The English Tone of Voice. London: Edward Arnold, 1-46. Faber, D. (1987). The accentuation of intransitive sentences in English. Journal of Linguistics, 23, 341-358. Gussenhoven, C. (1986). The intonation of George and Mildred: post-nuclear generalizations. In C. Johns-Lewis (ed.) Intonation in Discourse. London: Croom Helm. Reprinted in C. Gussenhoven (1984), On the Grammar and Semantics of Sentence Accents. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 93-149. Halliday, M. A. K. (1967). Intonation and Grammar in British English. The Hague: Mouton. Halliday, M. A. K. (1970). A Course in Spoken English: Intonation. London: Oxford University Press. Kingdon, R. (1958). The Groundwork of English Intonation. London: Longman. Ladd, D. R. (1980). The Structure of Intonational Meaning. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. OConnor, J. D. and Arnold, G. F. (1973). Intonation of Colloquial English. London: Longman. (1st edn., 1961). Prince, E. F. (1981). Toward a taxonomy of given-new information. In P. Cole (ed.) Radical Pragmatics. New York: Academic Press, 223-255. Schmerling, S. F. (1976). Aspects of English Sentence Stress. Austin: University of Texas Press. Silva-Corvaln, C. (1983). On the interaction of word order and intonation: some OV constructions in Spanish. In F. Klein-Andreu (ed.) Discourse Perspectives on Syntax. New York: Academic Press, Inc. Suer, M. (1982). Syntax and Semantics of Spanish Presentational Sentence-Types. Washington, D. C.: Georgetown University Press.

APPENDIX: THE TEST Capitalisation shows the problem areas tested and the expected answers. 1. (It is summer time. Two friends are talking after lunch). 12

Tom: Its rather HOT in here today. David: I agree. I think we need the WINdow open. 2. (A couple is going out for dinner. The wife is looking for a top for her skirt). Wife: How do you like this BLOUSE, honey? Husband: Not much really, dear. Wife: Oh, what shall I wear then? Husband: Well, lets see. Wheres that SWEATer I gave you? Wife: I lent it to Susan. Shell give it back on MONday, I think. 3. (Two hours later the same couple are still at home). Husband: If we hurry we can get there in no time. Wife: You can hurry if you like, Im not going to. Husband: But were already late! Wife: I dont care if we ARE late. 4. (Two friends are talking about a newly married couple). Peter: By the way, have you heard from Betty and Andrew? Tom: Oh, yes. Betty and I went out SHOPping together the other day. Theyre getting on like a house on fire. 5. (It is breakfast time. Husband and wife are talking). Wife: Oh honey! I forgot to tell you The ROBinsons are coming tonight. Husband: Oh gosh! I cant stand them. Wife: Come on! Theyre not THAT bad, David. 6. (Kathy and Jack are talking on the phone). Jack: Are you free this weekEND, Kathy? Kathy: No, Im afraid not. I have some BOOKS to read. Im taking my FInals, you know. 7. (A tutor is talking to his student). Tutor: Do you think you could possibly hand in your final report by the end of the week? Student: No, Im afraid I cant. I still have some TOPics to cover. 8. (Two girls are at a party). Susan: What TIME is it, Rose? Rose: (looking at her watch) Oh no! My WATCH has stopped! 9. (Two tourists are trying to find their way to the station). Tourist 1: I wonder where the station is. Can you find it on your map?

13

Tourist 2: No, I cant. Lets ASK somebody. 10. (Liz and Mary have just been introduced). Liz: So you live in Park Street. Mary: No, Park Avenue. Liz: Oh, I remember now. You live opposite the PUB we used to go to. 11. (Two friends are talking about their likes and dislikes). Mike: And youre interested in CLASsical music, I believe. Bob: Yes, I am. Arent you? Mike: Well, not much, really. I like pop music. 12. (Two tourists are in Germany). Jake: I think German people are friendly. Ted: Come on! Theyre absolutely UNfriendly. 13. (Mike is knocking at Peters door). Mike: Isnt Peter in? Tom: No, hes OUT somewhere. He should be back by three. 14. (Miss White is late for work. Mr Parker is her boss). Mr Parker: Miss White, you know you are supposed to be here at eight oclock. Not at ten
PAST

eight.

Miss White: Im sorry, Mr Parker, but my CAR broke down. 15. (Two lecturers are discussing class problems). Lecturer 1: A lot of first year students have already dropped out. They say that most of the subjects are too difficult to cope with. Lecturer 2: I KNEW that would happen. 16. (Tony and John are in the livingroom and a loud noise comes from the kitchen). Tony: What was that? John: Helens in the kitchen. She must have DROPPED something. 17. (Bill couldnt hear what John said about Liz). What did you SAY?, Bill asked John. I said she has a SCREW loose, John replied. Yes, Im afraid youre RIGHT, Bill agreed. 18. (Sally and Janet are talking about Lucys plans for this summer). Sally: Lucy is going to BraZIL this summer. Janet: What about her trip to Europe? Sally: She said it had been called off.

14