The impact of language contact on focus realization in Bulgarian Judeo-Spanish
Abstract
This study investigates focus-induced word-order variation in two groups of informants from Bulgaria: bilingual speakers of Bulgarian (BG) and the critically endangered minority language Judeo-Spanish (BJS), and monolingual speakers of BG. Based on semi-spontaneous data collected as part of an elicited production task, it is shown that the two languages largely pattern together in preferring the signalling of focus in situ via prosodic means, although syntactic strategies such as p-movement, focus fronting, and dislocations are used to a minor extent. Clefting only occurs in the BJS data. Furthermore, the syntax of BJS shows linear orderings of constituents that are ungrammatical in Mainstream Spanish and strongly point to cross-linguistic influence from BG. The study thus presents further evidence for the instability of interface phenomena such as the realization of information structure in language contact and hence supports the Interface Hypothesis (Sorace 2011, Chamorro & Sorace 2019).
Keywords
langauge contact, cross-linguistic influence, information structure, interfaces, Judeo-SpanishReferences
Andreeva, Bistra, & Snezhina Dimitrova. 2021 = Андреева, Бистра, & Снежина Димитрова. 2021. Прозодични характеристики на изречения с комуникативно маркиран и комуникативно немаркиран словоред [Prosodic characteristics of sentences with communicatively marked and communicatively unmarked alignment]. Български език и литература [Bulgarian Language and Literature] 63(6): 595–608.
Andreeva, Bistra, Dimitrova, Snezhina, Gabriel, Christoph, & Jonas Grünke. 2021. Intonational convergence in Bulgarian Judeo-Spanish spontaneous speech. In A. Teixeira Kalkhoff, M. Selig, & C. Mooshammer (eds), Prosody and conceptional variation. Situational conditions of communication, degree of communicational planning, and activity types as parameters for prosodic design, 171–190. Frankfurt: Lang.
Andreeva, Bistra, Dimitrova, Snezhina, Gabriel, Christoph, & Jonas Grünke. 2019. The intonation of Bulgarian Judeo-Spanish spontaneous speech. In S. Calhoun, P. Escudero, M. Tabain, & P.Warren (eds), Proceedings of the 19th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, Melbourne, Australia 2019, 3827–3841. Canberra, Australia: Australasian Speech Science and Technology Association Inc.
Appel, René, & Pieter Muysken. 1987. Language contact and bilingualism. London: Edward Arnold.
Arnaudova, Olga. 2003. Focus and Bulgarian clause structure. Ph.D thesis, Ottawa: University of Ottawa.
Avgustinova, Tania. 1997. Word order and clitics in Bulgarian. Ph.D. thesis, Saarbrücken: Saarland University.
Batllori, Montserrat, & Ioanna Sitaridou. 2020. Fronting in Old Spanish. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5(1): 61. 1–39. DOI: 10.5334/gjgl.893
Bradley, Travis G., & Jacob J. Adams. 2018. Sonority distance and similarity avoidance effects in Moroccan Judeo-Spanish. Linguistics 56(6): 1463–1511. DOI: 10.1515/ling-2018-0028
Bourdeau, Corentin. 2024. The Wolof basic clause and its information-structural derivatives. Amsterdam: LOT.
Cabrera Abreu, Mercedes, & María Luisa García Lecumberri. 2003. The manifestation of intonational focus in Castilian Spanish. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 2: 33–54, https://raco.cat/index.php/CatalanJournal/article/view/308965.
Casielles-Suárez, Eugenia. 2004. The syntax-information structure interface: Evidence from Spanish and English. London: Routledge.
Chamorro, Gloria, & Antonella Sorace. 2019. The interface hypothesis as a framework for studying L1 attrition. In B. Köpke, & M. Schmid (eds), The Oxford handbook of language attrition, 25–35. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 9780198793595.013.42
Cooper, William E., Eady, Stephen J., & Pamela R. Mueller. 1985. Acoustical aspects of contrastive stress in question-answer contexts. Acoustic Society of America 77: 2142–2156.
Datcheva, Galia. 2004. Das Bulgarische im strukturellen Vergleich zum Deutschen. Hamburg: Universität Hamburg.
Dimitrova, Snezhina, Andreeva, Bistra, Gabriel, Christoph, & Grünke, Jonas. 2018. Speaker age effects on prosodic patterns in Bulgarian. In K. Klessa, J. Bachan, A. Wagner, M. Karpiński, & D. Śledziński (eds), Procedings of Speech Prosody 2018, 709–713. Poznań: Uniwersytet im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu. https://www.isca-archive.org/speechprosody_2018/dimitrova18_speechprosody.pdf
Destruel, Emilie. 2012. The French c’est-cleft: An empirical study on its meaning and use. In C. Piñón (ed.), Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 9: 95–112. Paris: CSSP. http://www.cssp.cnrs.fr/eiss9/eiss9_destruel.pdf
De Prada Pérez, A. 2010. Subject position in Spanish in contact with Catalan. Language similarity vs. interface vulnerability. In M. Iverson, I. Ivanov, T. Judy, J. Rothman, R. Slabakova, & M. Tryzna (eds), Proceedings of the 2009 Mind/Context Divide Workshop, 104–115. Somerville: Cascadilla.
Domínguez, Laura, & Maria J. Arche. 2008. Optionality in L2 grammars. The acquisition of SV/VS contrast in Spanish. In H. Chan, H. Jacob, & E. Kapia (eds), Proceedings of Annual Boston Conference on Language Development 32, 96–107. Somerville, Mass.: Cascadilla.
https://eprints.soton.ac.uk/63810/1/dominguez_arche_BUCLD_32.pdf
Domínguez, Laura. 2013. Understanding interfaces. Second language acquisition and first language attrition of Spanish subject realization and word order variation. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Dufter, Andreas, & Christoph Gabriel. 2016. Information structure, prosody, and word order. In S. Fischer, & C. Gabriel (eds), Manual of grammatical interfaces in Romance, 419–455. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110311860-017
Dyer, Donald. 1992. Word Order in the Simple Bulgarian Sentence. Amsterdam: Rodopi.
Eide, Kristine, & Ioanna Sitaridou. 2014. Contrastivity and information structure in the Old Ibero-Romance languages. In K. Bech, & K. Gunn Eide (eds), Information structure and syntactic change in Germanic and Romance languages, 377–412. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/la.213.14eid
Face, Timothy. 2001. Focus and early peak alignment in Spanish intonation. Probus 13: 223–246. DOI: 10.1515/prbs.2001.004
Face, Timothy. 2002. Intonational marking of contrastive focus in Madrid Spanish. Frankfurt: Lang.
Feldhausen, Ingo, & Maria del Mar Vanrell. 2024. Prosody, focus and word order in Catalan and Spanish: An optimality theoretic approach. Proceedings of the 10th International Seminar on Speech Production (ISSP), Köln (Germany), 122–125.
Feldhausen, Ingo, & Maria del Mar Vanrell. 2015. Oraciones hendidas y marcación del foco estrecho en español. Revista internacional de lingüística iberoamericana 13 (2): 39–60. DOI: 10.31819/rili-2015-132604
Feldhausen, Ingo, & Maria del Mar Vanrell. 2024. Focus realization in heritage Spanish. The case of German-dominant speakers of Peninsular Spanish. In R. Rao (ed.), The phonetics and phonology of heritage languages, 166–189. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/9781108966986.009
Fischer, Susann. 2024. Language contact and the development of Judeo-Spanish syntax. In F. Savelsberg, & L Minervini (eds), New Perspectives on the Language(s) of the Sephardim, 166–190. Leiden: Brill.
Fischer, Susann, & Jorge Vega Vilanova. 2018. Contact-induced change in Judeo-Spanish. In D. Bunis, C. Deppner, & I. Vučina Simović (eds), Caminos de leche y miel, 135–153. Barcelona: Tirocinio.
Fischer, Susann, Vega Vilanova, Jorge, Andreeva, Bistra, Avgustinova, Tania, Gabriel, Christoph, Grünke, Jonas, Klüh, Diana, & Mitko Sabev 2024. Patterns and interfaces in language contact. The case of Judeo-Spanish in Bulgaria. Linguistische Berichte 280: 409–438.
Fischer, Susann, Gabriel, Christoph, & Elena Kireva. 2014. Towards a typological classification of Judeo-Spanish: Analyzing syntax and prosody of Sofia Judezmo. In K. Braunmüller, S. Höder, & K. Kühl (eds), Stability and divergence in language contact. Factors and mechanisms, 77–108. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/silv.16.05fis
Fischer, Susann, Navarro, Mario, & Jorge Vega Vilanova. 2019. The clitic doubling parameter. Development and distribution of a cyclic change. In M. Bouzouita, A. Breitbarth, L. Danckaert, & E. Witzenhausen (eds), Cycles in language change, 52–71. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780198824961.003.0004
Gabriel, Christoph. 2010. On focus, prosody, and word order in Argentinean Spanish: A minimalist OT account. Revista virtual de estudos da linguagem 4: 183–222. http://www.revel.inf.br/files/artigos/revel_special_4_on_focus_prosody_and_word_order.pdf
Gabriel, Christoph, & Jonas Grünke. 2018. Focus, prosody, and subject positions in L3 Spanish: Analyzing data from German learners with Italian and European Portuguese as heritage languages. In M. García García, & M. Uth (eds), Focus realization in Romance and beyond (Studies in Language Companion Series 201), 357–386. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Gabriel, Christoph, & Jonas Grünke. 2022. Unmarked use of marked syntactic structures. In D. Garassino, & D. Jacob (eds), When data challenges theory. Unexpected and paradoxical evidence in information structure, 240–270. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/la.273.08gab
Gabriel, Christoph, & Jonas Grünke. To appear. Language contact and information structure. In J. Steffen et al. (eds), Contact varieties of Spanish and Spanish-lexified contact varieties (HSK). Berlin: Mouton De Gruyter.
Gabriel, Christoph, & Steffen Heidinger. 2022. The focus prominence rule in Spanish from a perception perspective. Borealis 11(1): 141–172. DOI: 10.7557/1.11.1.6483
Gabriel, Christoph, & Steffen Heidinger. 2025. Prosody and focus recognition in Spanish. A fresh look at the Focus Prominence Rule. Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics 11(2)/4, 1–35. DOI: 10.5565/rev/isogloss.404.
García Moreno, Aitor. 2023. The syntax of Judaeo-Spanish. In G. Mensching, & F. Savelsberg (eds), Manual of Judaeo-Romance linguistics and philology, 507–553. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110302271-020
Gómez Seibane, Sara. 2012. Contacto de lenguas y orden de palabras. OV/VO en el español del País Vasco. Lingüística Española Actual 34: 1–21.
Grinevald, Colette, & Michel Bert. 2012. Speakers and communities. In P. K. Austin, & J. Sallabank (eds), The Cambridge handbook of endangered languages, 45–65. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/CBO9780511975981.003
Grünke, Jonas, Andreeva, Bistra, Gabriel, Christoph, & Mitko Sabev. 2023. Vocative intonation in language contact: The case of Bulgarian Judeo-Spanish. In Languages 8(4), 284. DOI: 10.3390/languages8040284
Grünke, Jonas, Sabev, Mitko, Gabriel, Christoph, & Bistra Andreeva. 2023. Vowel reduction in spontaneous Bulgarian Judeo-Spanish. In R. Skarnitzl, & J. Violín (eds), Proceedings of the 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, 2844–2848. Praha: Guarant International. https://guarant.cz/icphs2023/220.pdf
Gupton, Timothy. 2017. Early minority language acquirers of Spanish exhibit focus-related interface asymmetries: Word order alternation and optionality in Spanish-Catalan, Spanish-Galician, and Spanish-English bilinguals. In F. Lauchlan, & M. C. Parafita Couto (eds), Bilingualism and minority languages in Europe, 212–239. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars.
Gupton, Timothy. 2018. Syntax and its interfaces. In K. L. Geeslin (ed.), The Cambridge handbook of Spanish linguistics, 392–414. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. DOI: 10.1017/9781316779194.019
Heidinger, Steffen. 2013. Information focus, syntactic weight and postverbal constituent order in Spanish. Borealis 2: 159–190. DOI: 10.7557/1.2.2.2742
Heine, Bernd, & Tania Kuteva. 2013. Contact and grammaticalization. In R. Hickey (ed.), The handbook of language contact, 86–105. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Hertel, Tammy J. 2003. Lexical and discourse factors in the second language acquisition of Spanish word order. Second Language Research 19: 273–304. DOI: 10.1191/0267658303sr224
Hickey, Raymond. 2013. Language contact: Reconsideration and reassessment. In R. Hickey (ed.), The handbook of language contact, 1–28. West Sussex: Wiley-Blackwell.
Hoot, Bradley. 2017. Narrow presentational focus in heritage Spanish and the syntax-discourse interface. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 7 (1): 63–95. DOI: 10.1075/lab.14021.hoo
Hoppe, Jens 2009. Bulgarien. In W. Benz (ed.), Handbuch des Antisemitismus. Judenfeindschaft in Geschichte und Gegenwart, 64–70. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Hualde, José Ignacio, & Pilar Prieto. 2015. Intonational variation in Spanish. European and American varieties. In S. Frota, & P. Prieto (eds), Intonation in Romance, 350–391. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: acprof:oso/9780199685332.003.0010
Hualde, José Ignacio, & Mahir Şaul. 2011. Istanbul Judeo-Spanish. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 41: 89–110. DOI: 10.1017/S0025100310000277
Irurtzun, Aritz. 2019. Polarity questions with fronted foci in the Spanish of the Basque Country. In A. J. Gallego (ed.), The syntactic variation of Spanish dialects, 159–180. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780190634797.003.0006
Jackendoff, Ray. 1972. Semantic interpretation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.
Jasinskaja, Katja. 2016. Information structure in Slavic. In C. Féry, & S. Ishihara The Oxford handbook of information structure, 709−732. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199642670.013.25
Junghanns, Uwe, & Gerhild Zybatow. 2009. Grammatik und Informationsstruktur. In S. Kempgen, P., Kosta, T., Berger, & K. Gutschmidt (eds), Die slavischen Sprachen. Ein internationales Handbuch zu ihrer Struktur, ihrer Geschichte und ihrer Erforschung, 684–707. Berlin: De Gruyter.
Kim, Ji-Young. 2019. Heritage speakers’ use of prosodic strategies in focus marking in Spanish. International Journal of Bilingualism 23: 986–1004. DOI: 10.1177/1367006918763139
Krifka, Manfred. 2008. Basic notions of information structure. Acta Linguistica Hungarica 55: 243–276. DOI: 10.1556/ALing.55.2008.3-4.2
Kroch, Antony. 2002. Syntactic Change. In M. Baltin, & C. Collins (eds), The Handbook of Contemporary Syntactic Theory, 699–729. Oxford: Blackwell.
Kühl, Karoline, & Kurt Braunmüller. 2014. Stability and convergence: An extended perspective on language contact. In K. Braunmüller, S. Höder, & K. Kühl (eds), Stability and divergence in language contact: Factors and mechanisms, 13–38. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/silv.16.02kuh
Leafgren, John. 2010. A concise Bulgarian grammar. Online resource. http://www.seelrc.org:8080/grammar/pdf/stand_alone_bulgarian.pdf
Leal Méndez, Tania, Emilie Destruel, & Bradley Hoot. 2018. The realization of information focus in monolingual and bilingual native Spanish. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 8: 217–251. DOI: 10.1075/lab.16009.lea
Lightfoot, David. 1981. Explaining syntactic change. In N. Hornstein, & D. Lightfoot (eds), Explanation in Linguistics: The Logical Problem of Language Acquisition, 209–240. Longman: London.
López, Luis. 2009. A derivational syntax for information structure. Oxford: Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199557400.001.0001
López Ortero, Julio César. 2022. Lexical frequency effects on the acquisition of syntactic properties in heritage Spanish: A study on unaccusative and unergative predicates. Heritage Language Journal 19, 1–37.
Lozano, Anthony. 1975. Syntactic borrowing in Spanish from Quechua. The NP. In R. A. de Matos, & R. Ravines (eds), Lingüística e indigenismo moderno en América, 297–305. Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos.
Makartsev, Maxim. 2020. Bulgarian. In M. L. Greenberg (ed.), Encyclopedia of Slavic languages and linguistics online. Leiden: Brill. DOI: 10.1163/2589-6229_ESLO_COM_031941
Matras, Yaron. 2009. Language contact. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Minervini, Laura. 2023. The formation and development of Judaeo-Spanish. In G. Mensching, & F. Savelsberg (eds), Manual of Judaeo-Romance linguistics and philology, 267–299. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110302271-012
Moreno Cabrera, Juan Carlos. 1999. Las funciones informativas: las perífrasis de relativo. In I. Bosque, & V. Demonte (eds), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, 4245–4302. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.
Muntendam, A. 2009. Linguistic transfer in Andean Spanish: Syntax or pragmatics? Ph.D. thesis, Urbana Champaign: University of Illinois.
Muntendam, Antje. 2013. On the nature of cross-linguistic transfer. A case study of Andean Spanish. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition 16(1), 111–131. DOI: 10.1017/S1366728912000247
Odlin, Terence. 1989. Language transfer. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Olarrea, Antxon. 2012. Word order and information structure. In J. I. Hualde, A. Olarrea, & E. O’Rourke (eds), The handbook of Hispanic linguistics, 603–628. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
Penchev 1980 = Пенчев, Йордан. 1980. Основни интонационни контури в българското изречение [Basic intonation contours in the Bulgarian sentence]. София: БАН [Sofia: BAN].
Rialland, Annie, & Stéphane Robert. 2001. The intonational system of Wolof. Linguistics 39(5), 893–939. DOI: 10.1515/ling.2001.038
Roberts, Ian, & Anna Roussou. 2003. Syntactic change: A minimalist approach to grammaticalization. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Siewierska, Anna, & Ludmila Uhlířová. 1998. An overview of word order in Slavic languages. In A. Siewierska (ed.), Constituent order in the languages of Europe, 105–149. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110812206.105
Sitaridou, Ioanna. 2011. Word Order and Information Structure in Old Spanish. Catalan Journal of Linguistics (Generative Diachronic Syntax: Word Order and InformationStructure) 10: 159–184. DOI: 10.5565/rev/catjl.36
Sorace, Antonella. 1999. Initial states, end-states and residual optionality in L2 acquisition. In A. Greenhill, H., Littlefield, & C. Tano (eds), Proceedings of the 23rd Boston University Conference on Language Development, 666–674. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Sorace, Antonella. 2000. Syntactic optionality in non-native grammars. Second Language Research 16(2): 93–102. DOI: 10.1191/026765800670666032
Sorace, Antonella. 2011. Pinning down the concept of ‘interface’ in bilingualism. Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism 1: 1–33. DOI: 10.1075/lab.1.1.01sor
Sorace, Antonella, & Francesca Filiaci. 2006. Anaphora resolution in near-native speakers of Italian. Second Language Research 22(3): 339–368.
Thomason, Sarah Grey. 2001. Language contact: An introduction. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Thomason, Sarah Grey, & Terrence Kaufman. 1988. Language contact: creolization, and genetic linguistics. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Tisheva, Yovka 2013 = Тишева, Йовка. 2013. Прагматични аспекти на устната реч [Pragmatic aspects of the speech]. София: Факултет по славянски филологии, Софийски университет „Св. Климент Охридски“ [Sofia: Faculty of Slavic Philology, University of Sofia “St. Kliment Ohridski”].
Urrutia Cárdenas, Hernán. 1995. Morphosyntactic features in the Spanish of the Basque Country. In C. Silva-Corvalán (ed.), Spanish in four continents: Studies in language contact and bilingualism, 243–259. Washington: Georgetown University Press.
Uth, Melanie. 2014. Spanish preverbal subjects in contexts of narrow information focus: Non-contrastive focalization or epistemic-evidential marking? Grazer Linguistische Studien 81: 87–104. https://unipub.uni-graz.at/download/pdf/1275891.pdf
Uth, Melanie. 2018. Focus realization at the prosody-syntax interface: Yucatecan Spanish opposed to Standard Mexican Spanish. In M. García García, & M. Uth (eds), Focus realization in Romance and beyond, 71–98. Amsterdam: Benjamins. DOI: 10.1075/slcs.201.03uth
Vallduví, Enric. 1991. The role of plasticity in the association of focus and prominence. Eastern States Conference in Linguistics 7: 295–306.
Van Coetsem, Frans. 2000. A general and unified theory of the transmission process in language contact. Heidelberg: Winter.
Van Gelderen, Elly. 2004. Grammaticalization as economy. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Vanrell, Maria del Mar, & Olga Fernández-Soriano. 2013. Variation at the interfaces in Ibero-Romance. Catalan and Spanish prosody and word order Catalan Journal of Linguistics 12: 253–282. DOI: 10.5565/rev/catjl.63
Vega Vilanova, Jorge & Lisa Figura. To appear. Intergenerational transmission of an endangered heritage language: The case of Bulgarian Judeo-Spanish. In V. Tomescu, & A. Sevcenco (eds), Language Acquisition at the Syntax-Discourse and Semantic-Pragmatics Interfaces by Monolingual, Bilingual and Heritage Language Speakers. Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Publishing.
von Stechow, Arnim. 1991. Current issues in the theory of focus. In A. von Stechow, & D. Wunderlich (eds), Semantics: An international handbook of contemporary research, 804–825. Berlin: De Gruyter. DOI: 10.1515/9783110126969.10.804
Weinreich, Uriel. 1953 [1968]. Languages in contact: Findings and problems. New York: Linguistic Circle of New York [The Hague: Mouton].
Yovkova-Shii, Eleonora 2022 = Йовкова-Шии, Елеонора. Информационна структура на българското изречение с оглед на подлога [The information structure of the Bulgarian sentence in relation to the subject]. Proceedings of the International Annual Conference of the Institute for Bulgarian Language 35: 176–193.
Zapata, Gabriela C., Sánchez, Liliana, & Almeide Jacqueline Toribio. 2005. Contact and contracting Spanish. International Journal of Bilingualism 9(3/4): 377–395. DOI: 10.1177/13670069050090030501
Zubizarreta, María Luisa. 1998. Prosody, focus, and word order. Cambridge: The MIT Press.
Zubizarreta, María Luisa. 1999. Las funciones informativas: Tema y foco. In I. Bosque, & V. Demonte (eds), Gramática descriptiva de la lengua española, 4215–4244. Madrid: Espasa Calpe.
Zubizarreta, María Luisa, & Emily Nava. 2011. Encoding discourse-based meaning. Prosody vs. syntax. Implications for second language acquisition. Lingua 121: 652–669. DOI: 10.1016/j.lingua.2010.06.013
Published
How to Cite
Downloads
Funding data
-
Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft
Grant numbers 491553503
Copyright (c) 2026 Jonas Grünke, Christoph Gabriel, Susann Fischer, Jorge Vega Vilanova
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
