We hypothesize that both Porteño and L2 Castilian Spanish pattern with Italian with respect to their rhythmic shape in displaying a greater variability of vocalic intervals (VarcoV, VnPVI) and a higher proportion of vocalic material (% V) than native Castilian Spanish. The goal of the present chapter is to corroborate these findings analyzing semi-spontaneous speech. On the basis of analysis of scripted data, it was shown in earlier work Porteño and L2 Castilian Spanish, produced by Italian natives, pattern with Italian in displaying higher proportion of vocalic material in the speech signal and greater variability of vocalic intervals, in contrast to L1 Castilian Spanish. Given that migration-induced language contact is necessarily linked to the learning of a foreign language by the immigrant population, it has been argued that the typical shape of Porteño prosody is the result of prosodic transfer from L1 Italian to L2 Spanish (McMahon 2004). This chapter investigates the speech rhythm of Porteño, the variety of Spanish spoken in Buenos Aires, which is said to be influenced by Italian due to massive streams of immigration from the mid-nineteenth century onwards. We therefore conclude that super-heavy syllables, i.e., syllables with ternary branching rhymes, are acceptable syllable structures in these dialects. This results in the resyllabification of the original onset consonant without any shortening of the preceding vowel or diphthong. Besides the existence of the super-heavy syllable as part of the inventory of syllable types, there are further occurrences of super-heavy syllables which result from what we at present see as a post-lexical process: Schwa, which is itself seen as the result of an historical vowel-weakening process, is often elided in phrase-final position. The combined auditory and instrumental analysis of quasi-spontaneous speech recordings of dialect speakers in Ischia and Pozzuoli and of Bari and Naples regional varieties of Standard Italian shows a variability of syllable structure and, in particular, a frequency of heavy and super-heavy syllables which may well place these varieties of Italian nearer to the stress-timed pole of the rhythm continuum than has generally been assumed.
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