Influence of the pragmatic value in the absolute length of stressed vowel of diminutive suffix -ito in chilean spanish

Authors

  • Ricardo Valderrama Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción
  • Hernán Emilio Pérez Universidad de Concepción
  • Darío Fuentes Universidad Católica de la Santísima Concepción

Abstract

A quantitative exploratory study that aims to determine the influence of the pragmatic value variable in the absolute length of stressed vowel (phoneme / i /) present in appreciative suffix -ito in Chilean Spanish is presented in this article. A protocol with several samples of the different pragmatic uses of the diminutive suffix in context was created. Using this protocol, a corpus of 250 lexical items with appreciative diminutive suffixes in context of controlled speech produced by 10 native Chilean Spanish speakers was obtained. Absolute length of the vowel /i/ for each token of the suffix was measured in milliseconds and the results were compared by statistical procedures. The results show that indeed there is an incidence of pragmatic value in length of the stressed vowel in Chilean Spanish diminutive suffix -ito.

Keywords:

absolute length, vowel length, pragmatic value, diminutive suffix, phono-pragmatic