The intonation of Chota Valley Spanish: Contact-induced phenomena at the discourse-phonology interface

Abstract This study offers a prosodic analysis of broad focus declarative sentences in Chota Valley Spanish (CVS), an Afro-Hispanic dialect of Ecuador. Findings indicate that its phonological inventory of pitch accents and phrase boundary tones appears to be significantly simplified in comparison to what has been reported for other native, non-contact varieties of Spanish. In particular, we observe a strong tendency in CVS toward duplicating nuclear and prenuclear pitch accents, as well as phrase boundary tones. We analyze these results in terms of contact-induced phenomena related to a process of first language acquisition of advanced second language acquisition strategies, which appear to be hampered by processability constraints applying at the discourse-phonology interface. The study’s implications are discussed with respect to the debate concerning the origins of this dialect and several other Afro-Hispanic Languages of the Americas.