|
Article Excerpt
ABSTRACT. Traditionally the terminal contour has been considered the principal difference between the intonation of Spanish declaratives and absolute interrogatives. While the final fundamental frequency fall of declaratives and the final fundamental frequency rise of absolute interrogatives is certainly a key difference, the present study investigates the intonational differences between these two sentence types throughout the utterance. Experimental results show both phonetic and phonological differences in the intonation patterns, including differences at each stressed word in the utterance. This paper considers these differences and offers a phonological analysis of the units responsible for the intonation patterns found. This results in the discovery of the intonational cues at a listener's disposal in determining sentence type, and it opens the door for future work to examine the role of intonation in the perception of sentence type. *
INTRODUCTION. In the early work of Navarro Tomas (1918, 1944) on Castilian Spanish intonation, detailed descriptions of intonation patterns were given for numerous sentence types, including various categories of interrogatives. Little subsequent scholarship has examined the intonation of Spanish interrogatives. Occasional descriptive work on Castilian Spanish has considered the intonation of interrogatives, mostly noting the utterance-final rise or fall in FUNDAMENTAL FREQUENCY (F0). More attention has been paid to interrogative intonation in Caribbean varieties of Spanish, almost certainly due to their quite distinctive nature. Recent theoretical work on Spanish intonation, employing the AUTOSEGMENTALMETRICAL (AM) theory of intonational phonology, has examined Castilian Spanish but has focused almost exclusively on declaratives. Thus a need exists for research on interrogative intonation in Castilian Spanish, from both descriptive and theoretical perspectives. The present paper examines the intonation of absolute interrogatives in Castilian Spanish, comparing it to the intonation of lexically and grammatically identical declaratives.
One function of intonation in language is to disambiguate otherwise ambiguous utterances. Several studies have investigated the role of intonation in resolving different types of ambiguities in Spanish. For example, Nibert (1999, 2000) examined the way in which intonation leads to the correct interpretation of the scope of adjectives in phrases such as lilas y lirios amarillos 'yellow lilacs and irises', where the adjective amarillos 'yellow' may have scope over only lirios 'irises' or over both lilas 'lilacs' and lirios 'irises'. Hualde (2002) considered the role of intonational phrasing in distinguishing old information from new in an utterance. Kvavik (1988) and Willis (2002) investigated the role of intonation in making a distinction between declaratives and imperatives, such as Abre lapuerta, which can be interpreted as a declarative, 'He/she opens the door', or an imperative, 'Open the door!' De la Mota (1995, 1997) and Face (2001a,b, 2002a,b,c) investigated the ways in which intonation identifies that portion of an utterance being produced in narrow focus. More directly related to the present study, Sensui (1995, 2003), Sosa (1999), Willis (2003a) and Prieto (2004) examined the intonational differences between phrases such as Compro pan en el mercado when produced as the declarative, 'He/she bought bread at the market', and when produced as the absolute interrogative, 'Did he/she buy bread at the market?'.
While some studies examined the differences between declaratives and absolute interrogatives, those that considered Castilian Spanish have been limited in scope, with some focusing primarily on the end of the utterance (e.g. Quilis 1993), one focusing only on the first F0 peak of the utterance (Prieto 2004), and others considering perception of declarative or absolute interrogative without investigating the intonation patterns that led to such perception (Sensui 1995, 2003). The present study investigated the intonational differences between declaratives and absolute interrogatives in Castilian Spanish throughout the utterance, considering both phonetic and phonological differences. (1) A principle goal was to determine the intonational cues listeners have at their disposal in perceiving the distinction between the declarative and the absolute interrogative.
1. DECLARATIVE AND ABSOLUTE INTERROGATIVE INTONATION IN CASTILIAN SPANISH.
1.1. DECLARATIVES. While our present knowledge of Castilian Spanish absolute interrogative intonation is rather limited, a considerable amount is known about the intonation of Castilian Spanish declaratives. Here I will lay out the primary characteristics of Castilian Spanish declarative intonation, each of which can be seen in the example declarative pitch track in Figure 1 (shading indicates stressed syllables). First, each stressed syllable in an utterance is generally accompanied by a rise in F0. The rise in F0 begins at or near the onset of the stressed syllable, but the location of the end of the rise (i.e. the F0 peak) depends on the position of the rise within the utterance. In prenuclear (i.e. non-final) position, the rise generally ends in a post-tonic syllable, while in nuclear (i.e. final) position it ends within the stressed syllable. Furthermore, F0 peaks are typically downstepped in declaratives, with each achieving a lower F0 value than the preceding peak.
[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]
Recent work employing the AM model of intonational phonology has offered phonological analyses of the various parts of the Castilian Spanish declarative intonation pattern, or of similar patterns in other varieties of Spanish (Sosa 1991, 1995, 1999, 2003, Prieto, van Santen & Hirschberg 1995, Ortiz-Lira 1999, Nibert 2000, Face 2001a,b, 2002a,b,c, Beckman, Diaz-Campos, McGory & Morgan 2002, Hualde 2002, 2003, Willis 2002, 2003a, Prieto 2004). The prenuclear F0 rises are analyzed as resulting from either an H* or an...
|
