Ritmo y duración silábica en el español hablado en los llanos Venezolanos

Abstract

Through research we found that syllabic duration allows us to identify different varieties of\nspeech in the Venezuelan Plains (Llanos). According to Mora�s (1996) prosodic\nclassification, these are: Apure, Barinas, Cojedes, Guárico, and Portuguesa. Based on this\nclassification, we tape-recorded 10 subjects from each of these regions, and studied the\nfollowing variables: 1) Dependent: Syllabic duration, and 2) Independent: a) Apure,\nBarinas, Guárico, Cojedes and Portuguesa States, and b) the different syllabic positions\nwithin the units of meaning with the following variants: initial, final, first stressed syllable,\nlast syllable and stressed syllables. Data were analyzed statistically based on the ANOVA\ntest. By analyzing the results of this research we propose three rhythmic speech patterns in\nthe Venezuelan Plains, grouped in the following manner: 1) Apure-Guárico; 2) Barinas-\nCojedes, and 3) Portuguesa. As can be seen, Mora�s (1996) prosodic classification, based\non five states, can be regrouped into three areas based on our study, according to the\nsyllabic-acoustic duration parameter. Our results corroborate the idea that the acousticduration\nparameter plays a fundamental role in rhythmical structure of languages.