¿Prosodia norteña o castellana? Aproximación a la entonación del oriente de Cantabria

To this date studies in the intonation of the Cantabrian Castillian are scarce. The peculiar geographical and linguistic characteristics of this region, its early incorporation to Castille, the strong influence of Euskera, Asturleones and of other Spanish dialects sufficiently justify its wide internal variety. In this paper an analysis of the intonational structure of Laredo is performed, with a view to stablishing a first approximation to the intonational taxonomy of the eastern area and showing the differences and similitudes with other northern varieties and Castillians. The analysis of the data shows a great variety of realizations of the tonal accents in the two orational modes and a strong influence of the accentual structure of the words on the entonative configuration. In general terms, we have confirmed the coexistence of two diferent models: on the one hand, the northern pattern, regularly preserved in rural areas and, on the other hand, the Castillian one, characteristic of urban areas, albeit showing interferences with indigenous intonative features.