Doctoral Dissertation Research: An acoustic analysis of Spanish-K'ichee' (Mayan) bilingual intonation

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This dissertation project seeks to investigate the production of bilingual speech forms in the contact situation between Spanish and K'ichee' (Mayan) in Guatemala, where the languages stand in a situation of unstable diglossia. Specifically, it examines the phonetic transfer or convergence in the intonation contours of bilinguals that differ in language proficiency, as they produce contrastive focus utterances in naturalistic interviews and in controlled experiments. The principal questions that motivate the work are whether bilinguals give any prosodic emphasis to a contrastive focus constituent in K'ichee', and whether they present evidence of transfer from one language to the other or of convergence of intonation contours. The dissertation also explores the differences in prosodic focus marking in Spanish-dominant versus K'ichee'-dominant bilinguals and examines the patterns of interaction between these bilinguals' dominant languages. In pursuing these research aims, multiple tasks are employed to elicit contrastive focus productions from bilinguals from two dialect regions: Cantel, which is close to the Spanish-speaking urban center of Quetzaltenango, and Nahualá, which is further removed. The present study presents one of the first acoustic analyses of K'ichee' and Guatemalan Spanish and it contributes more generally to the literature on bilingual and contact Spanish intonation. In addition, it brings needed attention to an underrepresented indigenous population and its endangered language. Finally, in providing insight into the communicative norms and needs of this bilingual population, it may aid in the design and implementation of educational programs tailored to communities of Spanish-Mayan bilinguals throughout Guatemala.