Dialectal, historical and sociolinguistic aspects of Galician intonation

Abstract

Geoprosodic data are useful for studying language change and developing hypotheses about the diachrony of intonation. In the case of Galician, it is particularly interesting to study varieties of Galician and Portuguese which share a common origin but are separated by a long-standing political border. Work to date has concluded that some of these intonation patterns present a prosodic continuum, but has also identified a large part of the Galician linguistic area where a widespread pattern is found that is unrelated to Portuguese. An approach to the study of dialectology and linguistic change will be proposed which supplements traditional geoprosodic studies with sociolinguistic concepts such as contact between languages and language varieties. This article will address questions concerning interaction between geoprosodic variation and contact among languages and language varieties for the purpose of detecting ongoing prosodic change and describing prosodic convergence processes that affect coexisting language varieties in Galicia.