LINGUIST List 7.1710

Thu Dec 5 1996

Qs: Mexican prosody, Bib info, Mysterious symbol

Editor for this issue: Ann Dizdar <dizdarunix.tamu.edu>

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Directory

  1. Peter Farruggio, help with Mexican prosody
  2. Aya Matsuda, Bib info
  3. Atsushi Fukada, Q: mysterious symbol

Message 1: help with Mexican prosody

 Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 20:04:09 MST
From: Peter Farruggio <pfarruclink4.berkeley.edu>
Subject: help with Mexican prosody
Dear linguists,

I am a bilingual educator/researcher (not a trained linguist)
attempting to do some classroom discourse analysis as part of a larger
project

I need help in understanding the possible discourse functions of a
prosodic feature that is fairly widespread and peculiar to Mexican
Spanish

I will attempt to describe this in musical terms:

In the phrase

la comida no sirve

the syllables la and co are the last two beats of a triplet

mi da and no are a full triplet

sir is heavily stressed, is held for a half beat (the downbeat) and is
pitched several tones higher than the previous syllables

ve is unstressed, drops about a half tone in pitch, starts as the
downbeat and is held for several beats

another example

pues, aqui no hay nadie


pues and a are unstressed and sped up to form the last two beats of a
triplet

qui and no and hay form a triplet with a minor stress on qui

na is heavily stressed and is several tones higher then the previous
syllables

die is unstressed, a half tone below na and is held for several beats


It seems that this is a poetic sort of emphasis device. It has a very
song-like quality.


what I'd like to know is if anyone has studied this to discover some
sort of generality that carries across situations...or is this a
rhetorical device that strictly depends on the situation for
interpretation?


Can anyone help?

Pete Farruggio
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Message 2: Bib info

 Date: Thu, 28 Nov 1996 00:55:41 EST
From: Aya Matsuda <ayaomni.cc.purdue.edu>
Subject: Bib info

Could you please contact me if you have bib info for the following
article? I have a copy but cannot remember where it came from.

Author: Han, Chung-hye (University of Pennsylvania, Graduate school of
 Education)
Year: 1992?
Title: A comparative study of compliment responses: Korean females in
Korean interactions and in English interaction.

Thank you.

Aya Matsuda
Purdue Unviersity
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Message 3: Q: mysterious symbol

 Date: Wed, 27 Nov 1996 14:30:08 CST
From: Atsushi Fukada <afukadapurdue.edu>
Subject: Q: mysterious symbol
Dear linguists,

I found a mysterious symbol on a necklace the other day. It can be viewed
at the following URL.

http://www.sla.purdue.edu/fll/symbol.html

Could anybody tell me what the symbol is? I would appreciate any
suggestions. Please respond to me directly.

Thank you very much.

Atsushi Fukada

*******************************************************
Atsushi Fukada
Associate Professor of Japanese and Linguistics

Department of Foreign Languages and Literatures
Purdue University
Stanley Coulter Hall
West Lafayette, IN 47907
U.S.A.

Phone: (317) 494-3830/496-2259
Fax: (317) 496-1700
e-mail: afukadapurdue.edu (Japanese OK)
URL: http://www.sla.purdue.edu/fll/personal/fukada.html
*******************************************************
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