In 2019, Spain became the country with the third highest number of asylum applications in the EU and it continues to be one of the top destinations for international migration (Migration Policy Institute 2022). This is a particularly pressing issue in the southernmost regions of Spain, namely the Canary Islands, Ceuta, Melilla and Andalusia, which…

Rhetorical word stress has been identified as a feature of public, presentational, and didactic speech styles in Spanish through theoretical descriptions, intuitive accounts, and laboratory-based empirical research. Most scholars agree that non-primary stress is acoustically marked by pitch and primary stress is marked by segment lengthening. The…

The present study reports on the findings of a cross-sectional acoustic study of the production of Spanish vowels by three different groups of speakers: 1) native Spanish speakers; 2) native English intermediate learners of Spanish; and 3) native English advanced learners of Spanish. In particular, we examined the production of the five Spanish…

Examines the relationship between accent in language learning and pitch discrimination in music. Research conducted under a grant from the U.S. Office of Education. (DS)

Despite a survey carried out on the teaching of Spanish language in British and Irish universities that showed one-third of the respondents considered the teaching of Spanish intonation unimportant, examples are presented to show that it is necessary in Spanish language instruction. (HP)

Comparison of how English and Spanish speakers express contrastive emphasis revealed that, while English speakers used pitch and intensity, Spanish speakers used changes in syntax and lexicon as well as pitch and intensity in showing contrasts. (CB)