The current study presents the delayed naming task as an effective tool for testing the robustness of phonotactic constraints. A delayed naming task was employed to test for quantity sensitivity among nonwords in Spanish. Results reveal a robust effect of stress modulation by syllable weight as evidenced by differential rates of error between…

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…

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)