Investigating the nature of aspirated stops in Western Andalusian Spanish

In Western Andalusian Spanish (WAS), [h + voiceless stop] clusters are realized as long pre- and postaspirated stops. This study investigates if a new class of stops (realized as geminates with variable degrees of pre- and postaspiration) has emerged in this dialect, or if postaspiration in these clusters results from articulatory overlap. An experiment was carried out in which WAS speakers produced [h + voiceless stop] clusters under changes in speech rate and stress location. The duration of postaspiration, measured as voice onset, did not show systematic effects of any of the experimental variables. Moreover, trade-offs were observed between voice onset and preaspiration plus closure durations. These results indicate that postaspiration in WAS [h + voiceless stop] clusters is the consequence of extensive articulatory overlap. It is further hypothesized that the lengthening of closures in WAS stops preceded by [h] results from a different gestural mechanism affecting all [hC] clusters in this dialect. From a broader perspective, since extensive overlap and consonantal lengthening do not occur in the [hC] clusters of other Spanish varieties, these findings lend support to the idea that intergestural coordination patterns can be dialect-specific

Propaganda and martyrdom in vandal Africa: the case of Arcadio and his companions

Este artículo repasa como la "Epistola consolatoria" de Honorato Antonino, obispo de Constantina, dirigida a Arcadio exhortándole al martirio, es una de las primeras fuentes en las que queda patente la utilización de la propaganda por parte del clero católico para denostar la invasión vándala. Sin embargo, el martirio de Arcadio y sus compañeros Probo, Pascual, Eutiquiano y Pablito -asesinados en el siglo V durante el reinado de Genserico por negarse a convertirse al arrianismo- fue pronto olvidado, hasta el punto que no se les recuerda en el santoral norteafricano. Su memoria, convertida ya en leyenda, volvería a reaparecer en la España del siglo XVI, donde dos ciudades españolas, Salamanca y Medinaceli, se disputarían la posesión de sus supuestas reliquias.This article re-examines the way in which the “Epistola consolatoria” by Honorato Antonino, bishop of Constantina, addressed to Arcadio urging him to become a martyr, is one of the first cases where it can be clearly seen the use the Catholic clergy makes of propaganda to denigrate the vandal invasion. However, the martyrdom of Arcadio and of his companions Probo, Pascual, Eutiquiano and Pablito, who were murdered in the 5th Century during the reign of Gaiseric, for refusing to convert to Arianism, was soon forgotten, to the extent that their names do not appear in the list of North African Saints. The memory of what they did, now a legend, would re-appear in the Spain of the 16th Century, when two Spanish cities, Salamanca and Medinaceli, would contend with each other over their supposed relics

Woman and sacred space: Making women visible in cult places from Iberian Period

Desde el campo de la religiosidad de época ibérica y partiendo del concepto de arqueología del género, intento una aproximación al espacio de la mujer y al papel que pudo desempeñar en las diferentes ceremonias religiosas. Me centro en el caso de los santuarios para plantear si es posible hacer visible a la mujer en estos lugares sagradosWoman and sacred space. Making women visible in sacred sanctuaries in Iberian Culture. From the gender archaeology and religious and ritual focus during the Iberian Culture (6th-1st Centuries BC), I present an approach to the woman’s role and its meaning in the different ritual ceremonies. I propose several studies cases on Iberian sanctuaries where it would be possible to analyze the woman’s rol

Melodic alternations in Spanish

This article describes how the tonal elements of two common Spanish intonation contours –the falling statement and the low-rising-falling request– align with the segmental string in broad-focus utterances differing in number of prosodic words. Using an imitation-and-completion task, we show that (i) the last stressed syllable of the utterance, traditionally viewed as carrying the ‘nuclear’ accent, associates with either a high or a low tonal element depending on phrase length (ii) that certain tonal elements can be realized or omitted depending on the availability of specific metrical positions in their intonational phrase, and (iii) that the high tonal element of the request contour associates with either a stressed syllable or an intonational phrase edge depending on phrase length. On the basis of these facts, and in contrast to previous descriptions of Spanish intonation relying on obligatory and constant nuclear contours (e.g., L* L% for all neutral statements), we argue for a less constrained intonational morphology involving tonal units linked to the segmental string via contour-specific principles

Un viaje seguro: las representaciones de pies y aves en la iconografía de época ibérica

En este artículo, a partir del estudio de un exvoto de bronce ibérico del Museo de Barcelona, procedente posiblemente del Santuario de Castellar (Jaén), que representa un pie izquierdo coronado por una paloma, se analizan los hallazgos tanto de pies como de aves en el mundo ibérico. El ave, símbolo de la divinidad femenina, sanciona con su presencia los ritos de pas

Mujer y espacio sagrado: haciendo visibles a las mujeres en los lugares de culto de época ibérica

Woman and sacred space. Making women visible in sacred sanctuaries in Iberian Culture. From the gender archaeology and religious and ritual focus during the Iberian Culture (6th-1st Centuries BC), I present an approach to the woman’s role and its meaning in the different ritual ceremonies. I propose several studies cases on Iberian sanctuaries where it would be possible to analyze the woman’s role

Listeners use intonational phrase boundaries to project turn ends in spoken interaction

In conversation, turn transitions between speakers often occur smoothly, usually within a time window of a few hundred milliseconds. It has been argued, on the basis of a button-press experiment [De Ruiter, J. P., Mitterer, H., & Enfield, N. J. (2006). Projecting the end of a speaker's turn: A cognitive cornerstone of conversation. Language, 82(3):515–535], that participants in conversation rely mainly on lexico-syntactic information when timing and producing their turns, and that they do not need to make use of intonational cues to achieve smooth transitions and avoid overlaps. In contrast to this view, but in line with previous observational studies, our results from a dialogue task and a button-press task involving questions and answers indicate that the identification of the end of intonational phrases is necessary for smooth turn-taking. In both tasks, participants never responded to questions (i.e., gave an answer or pressed a button to indicate a turn end) at turn-internal points of syntactic completion in the absence of an intonational phrase boundary. Moreover, in the button-press task, they often pressed the button at the same point of syntactic completion when the final word of an intonational phrase was cross-spliced at that location. Furthermore, truncated stimuli ending in a syntactic completion point but lacking an intonational phrase boundary led to significantly delayed button presses. In light of these results, we argue that earlier claims that intonation is not necessary for correct turn-end projection are misguided, and that research on turn-taking should continue to consider intonation as a source of turn-end cues along with other linguistic and communicative phenomena