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Broad focus declaratives in Veneto-Spanish bilinguals: Peak alignment and language contact

Abstract This paper examines peak alignment in Veneto-Spanish bilinguals in the small community of Chipilo, Mexico. We have two goals: First, to provide a description of the peak alignment patterns present in bilingual Chipilo Spanish. As Chipilo Spanish is in contact with a northern Italian variety (Veneto), we hypothesize that changes in peak alignment from monolingual norms, specifically regarding early peak alignment, may be due to transfer from Veneto. Second, we seek to compare the present data, based on controlled speech, to the results of a previous study on semi-spontaneous speech in Chipilo Spanish, contributing to the literature that compares methodologies in intonation research. Our results show that bilinguals demonstrate early peaks in controlled speech, although to a lesser extent than in semi-spontaneous speech. We attribute this to contact with Veneto and a strong sense of ethnolinguistic identity that leads speakers to maintain features of a Chipileño variety of Spanish.