Abstract:
In Spanish, stress on the final constituent of compound words is consistently preserved; however, it is uncertain whether stress on the initial constituent is preserved as well. This has given rise to controversies on the prosodic behaviour of proper compounds, syntagmatic compounds, and -mente adverbs. For proper compounds, some linguists claim that stress is deleted from the initial constituent, although a few argue, instead, that it is degraded from primary to secondary. Regarding syntagmatic compounds and -mente adverbs, it is often claimed that stress is preserved on both constituents, but the literature also includes studies defending that stress on the initial constituent is degraded or deleted. Given that empirical evidence has been scarce, these issues remain unresolved.
The present study examines all known phonetic correlates of stress using a comparative approach. The acoustic measures of proper compounds, syntagmatic compounds, and -mente adverbs are compared to those of phonologically similar non-compound words and phrases. Elicitation tasks are designed to obtain natural productions of the target words in both accented and unaccented contexts. The experimental design also takes precautions to avoid potential segmental and contextual interference.
The results demonstrate that the tested syllable in proper and syntagmatic compounds is more prominent than the corresponding syllable in non-compound words, but less so than the corresponding syllable in phrases. Moreover, a cross-compound-type analysis reveals no significant differences in stress. It is concluded, accordingly, that the initial constituent of Spanish compounds bears secondary stress. The findings for -mente adverbs are quite different. The tested syllable in -mente adverbs is as prominent as the corresponding syllable in phrases, which suggests that -mente adverbs are prosodically equivalent to two-word phrases; two primary stresses are present in both structures. Regional variation is also examined, but the results indicate that there is no dialectal difference in the stress of Spanish compounds
and -mente adverbs. These findings have important theoretical implications. They contribute to a better classification of Spanish compounds and provide insight into their prosodification.