Accents

There can be some variability with how accents/tildes are written in Spanish, but for our project, we need to be consistent in how we are transcribing. This is because we use a multi-layered system of coding that takes each transcribed word and categorizes it according to a number of linguistic parameters. For specific words, such as question words (e.g., qué-que, cómo-como, quién-quien, cuándo-cuando, dónde-donde, cuál-cual) and certain conjunctions, pronouns, and verbs (e.g., sí-si, él-el, tú-tu, sé-se, dé-de, más-mas), these accents can have a significant impact on how the code interprets the word.

In particular, we need to focus on the question/interrogative words (see the table above). The way we will be consistent with coding for this project is to only write them with an accent if they are part of a direct question or declarative statement. If they are part of an indirect question or an utterance that is embedded in another utterance, we will not write the words with an accent. See below for examples of these word pairs.

1. Direct question word: cómo

Example utterance: “¿Cómo se llama esto?”

Note: In this case, the underlined word is being used in a direct question and must have the accent.

2. Embedded question word: como

Example utterance: “no recuerdo como se llama esto”

Note: In this example, the underlined word is embedded in a subordinate clause following “no acuerdo”. As such, it does not have an accent.

3. Direct question word: qué

Example utterance: “¿Qué es esto?”

Note: In this case, the underlined word is being used in a direct question and must have the accent.

4. Embedded question word: que

Example utterance: “él dice que hay una barca allí”

Note: In this example, the underlined word is embedded in a subordinate clause following “él dice”. As such, it does not have an accent.

5. Direct question word: sí

Example utterance: “Sí, veo un coche”

Note: In this case, the underlined word is being used in an affirmative declaration and must have the accent.

6. Conjunction word: si

Example utterance: “Yo no sé si es una casa”

Note: In this example, the underlined word is embedded in a subordinate clause following “yo no sé”. As such, it does not have an accent.

Direct questions that should have the accent can also appear when participants are asking themselves questions, too. For example “¿Cómo se llama ….?”

Non-question words that require accents, such as él or yo sé, should always be written correctly according to Spanish spelling rules. That is, if él appears and is used as a pronoun, it should always have the accent. If sé is used as 1st person present tense of the verb saber, it should always have an accent, etc. Similarly, if the patient uses más and it has the meaning of “more”, it needs the accent. If it has the meaning of “but”, then it should not have the accent. Note that these words can interact with qué/que, too.

7. Direct question word: qué más

Example utterance: “¿Qué más hay?”

Note: This is an example of a direct question, so qué needs an accent. Likewise, más means “more” and also needs an accent.

8. Embedded question word: que + más

Example utterance: “Más que nunca…”

Note: This is a case in which más still means “more” and has an accent, but now notice that que is no longer in a direct question and should not have an accent.

For reference:

“Special Characters ISSUE: Accent marks in Spanish serve two distinct purposes. One purpose is to assist in the pronunciation of words that do not follow basic stress rules such as, words ending in a vowel, -n, or –s are stressed in the penultimate syllable, e.g., za-pa-to “shoe”. Thus, a word like comí “I ate” requires an accent mark because it is pronounced with stress in the last syllable and this stress pattern violates the basic stress rule of penultimate stress on words ending in vowels. The other purpose of accent marks is to disambiguate words that otherwise are written the same but have different syntactic roles or meanings, e.g., el “the” as definite article vs. él “he” as personal pronoun. Failure to account for lexical stress and 114 Assessing Language Production Using SALT Software grammatical category by not marking accents would negatively impact several SALT measures and reports, especially NDW and the Analyze menu: Standard Word Lists report. SOLUTION: SALT accepts accent characters and considers homophones differentiated by accented letters as distinct words. Thus, words such as que “that” (conjunction) and qué “what” (pronoun; adjective) are counted as different words and are reflected correctly in the Analyze menu: Standard Word Lists report. Figure 7-1 lists some of the most common homophones in Spanish that are distinguished by the accent mark.”

Additional examples of non-accented/accented word pairs in Spanish.

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-SALT Reference Book, pg. 113-114