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…

This study explores which features of Spanish as a foreign language (SFL) pronunciation most impact raters' evaluations. Native Spanish speakers (NSSs) from regions with different pronunciation norms were polled: 147 evaluators from northern Mexico and 99 evaluators from central Argentina. These evaluations were contrasted with ratings from…

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)