Prosodic differences in vocatives production: Colombian Spanish data

Abstract

This investigation describes the prosodic features of the vocative in the Spanish language as spoken in four Colombian main cities: Bogotá, Cali, Medellin and Cartagena. The data include 80 phrase-vocatives that serve different pragmatic functions and 169 vocatives in declarative and interrogative sentences. The analysis reveals that in addition to melody contour, syllable duration and tonal field are essential to differentiate between vocatives from the dialectal and pragmatic points of view.