Broad-focus declaratives in Argentine Spanish contact and non-contact varieties

This paper revisits the hypothesis that Buenos Aires Spanish (BAS) early peak-alignment and downstep are the result of contact with Italian. In order to support the hypothesis, I compared BAS to other contact (Spanish-Guarani) and non-contact varieties. Overall results confirmed previous findings and crucially showed that BAS differs from other Argentine non-contact varieties in the shape of prenuclear and nuclear accents and in the relative duration of the stressed syllable. Additionally, BAS, as opposed to the Spanish-Guarani contact variety studied here, shows early peak alignment in prenuclear accents and a nuclear fall. As such, the patterns observed in BAS are specific to this variety and, for the time being, is reasonable to attribute them to contact with Italian.