Constructional sources of durational shortening in discourse markers

Dados Bibliográficos

ID3988588
AutoresEric L Brown (0000-0003-2824-8887, Department of Spanish and Portuguese , University of Colorado at Boulder , Boulder , CO , USA, autor correspondente), Javier Rivas (0000-0002-9327-9906, Department of Spanish and Portuguese , University of Colorado at Boulder , Boulder , CO , USA)
Ano2024
Volume62
Fascículo4
Páginas1023-1045
Data de publicação2024-07-26
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoLinguistics (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0024-3949 • E-ISSN: 1613-396X
EditoraWalter de Gruyter GmbH (PUBLISHER • DE)
DOI10.1515/ling-2021-0096
OpenAlexW4392956688
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas1
Referências citadas64

Using naturally occurring data from Spanish from Madrid, this study is the first to analyze durations of the Spanish word decir 'to say, to tell' both as a verb with prepositional meaning and as part of the reformulating construction [es decir] 'that is to say' (N = 388). We show that, although it is neither highly grammaticalized nor frequent, [es decir] undergoes phonological reduction to a significantly greater degree than the more frequent lexical source decir 'to say'. Results of linear mixed-effects models predicting target duration suggest these durational differences cannot be explained due to conditioning factors of the target context controlled in this analysis (speech rate of the target word context, predictability of following words, number of phones, distance from pause). They do not appear to stem from an accumulation in memory of patterns of likelihood of use in those conditioning environments. We propose that [es decir] is stored as a lexical unit that contains as part of the lexical representation shorter word durations relative to the lexical form decir and that this durational shortening is part of the [reformulator] construction

Discourse marker · Linguistics · Sociology · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Psychology · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation