UROP Project

Voices of the Andes: Intonation and language contact in Peru and Argentina

Linguistics, Spanish, bilingualism, language contact, indigenous language

Research Mentor: Dr. Antje Muntendam, She/her
Department, College, Affiliation: Modern Languages and Linguistics, Arts and Sciences
Contact Email: amuntendam@fsu.edu
Research Assistant Supervisor (if different from mentor): Dr. Alex Rice He/him/his
Research Assistant Supervisor Email: ar25br@fsu.edu
Faculty Collaborators:
Faculty Collaborators Email:

Looking for Research Assistants: Yes
Number of Research Assistants: 3
Relevant Majors: Open to all majors. Linguistics, Spanish, Psychology, Communication Science & Disorders, and Anthropology majors are most relevant.
Project Location: On FSU Main Campus
Research Assistant Transportation Required:
Remote or In-person: Partially Remote
Approximate Weekly Hours: 6-10, Flexible schedule (Combination of business and outside of business. TBD between student and research mentor.)
Roundtable Times and Zoom Link:

• Day: Tuesday, September 2
  Start Time: 5:00
  End Time: 5:30
  Zoom Link: https://fsu.zoom.us/j/94234130009
• Day: Thursday, September 4
  Start Time: 4:00
  End Time: 4:30
  Zoom Link: https://fsu.zoom.us/j/95527499625
• Day: Friday, September 5
  Start Time: 3:30
  End Time: 4:00
  Zoom Link: https://fsu.zoom.us/j/94190005224

Project Description

This project examines the linguistic outcomes of language contact between Spanish and Quechua in Peru and Argentina, with particular attention to intonation. Quechua is an indigenous language spoken across the Andes, and has been in contact with Spanish for almost 500 years. This long-term contact situation as well as differences between the two languages have led to cross-linguistic influence.

This project specifically investigates intonation, which is an area that has been relatively unexplored in language contact studies in general, and in Quechua-Spanish contact studies in particular. Intonation is the melody of a sentence and corresponds to changes in pitch (e.g., high and low tones), which may cause changes in meaning. For instance, in many varieties of Spanish, intonation is used to make a distinction between questions and statements (e.g., ¿Tienes un gato? ‘Do you have a cat?’ vs. Tienes un gato. ‘You have a cat'). Intonation systems vary highly across languages and language varieties, and based on intonation, we can recognize where someone is from (e.g., from Spain, Peru, Argentina, or Cuba).

This project specifically focuses on the marking of yes/no-questions (e.g., Do you have a cat?), wh-questions (e.g., What do you have?), and statements in Quechua and Spanish. Quechua and Spanish use different strategies to mark questions and statements. In Quechua, questions are marked in morphology, that is, with an interrogative particle. Importantly, in Quechua questions and statements are not distinguished intonationally: both have a falling intonation. In Spanish, however, intonation is used to distinguish questions and statements and questions often have a rising intonation. The question is what happens when these languages come into contact. The specific research questions of this project are: (1) Do Quechua-Spanish bilinguals in Peru and Argentina use intonation and/or morphology (i.e., interrogative particles) to mark questions and statements in Quechua and Spanish? (2) How do Spanish monolinguals use intonation to mark questions and statements? (3) Are bilingual Quechua and Spanish in Peru and Argentina affected by language contact? If so, how?

To answer these questions, data were collected from Quechua-Spanish bilinguals from Cusco (Peru), and Quechua-Spanish bilinguals and Spanish monolinguals from Santiago del Estero (Argentina). The tasks included sociolinguistic background questionnaires, proficiency tasks, elicitation tasks to elicit questions and statements (including a game and a map task), a story telling task, and spontaneous data. The project is ongoing and additional bilingual and monolingual data will be collected in Peru (in Fall 2025) and Argentina.

In all, this project will provide new empirical data on understudied Quechua and Spanish varieties and will contribute to our understanding of the outcomes of language contact, in particular in the area of intonation.


Research Tasks: Research assistants will be working in a team consisting of the PI, a postdoctoral researcher, graduate students, undergraduate research assistants, and consultants. The research assistants will focus on the analysis of the Spanish data and questionnaire data. Their tasks consist of transcribing the data from the story-telling task, and segmenting, transcribing, annotating and acoustically analyzing data from the elicitation tasks. The research assistants will receive detailed instructions on all aspects of the project and will work closely with their mentors. There will be in-person meetings for instructions and checking work. The research tasks can be carried out on a computer in the lab or on a laptop computer, as all the software is freely available.

Skills that research assistant(s) may need: The required skill for this project is (basic) knowledge of Spanish. There are no other required skills as students will be trained in all aspects of the research, but some background in Linguistics (e.g., LIN 2004 World Languages, LIN 3041 Introduction to Linguistics, IDS 2291 Language Birth, Language Death, or another course) or in Spanish Linguistics (e.g., LIN 4700 Introduction to Hispanic Linguistics, LIN 4780 Spanish Phonetics, or another course) is a plus.