The prosody of questions and assertions: a situated study of Spanish in Brazil

Abstract

This work describes the intonation of yes-no questions and Wh-questions and their corresponding assertions. The corpus is based on Spanish utterances read in Spanish by four speakers: two L2 Spanish speakers from Brazil and two L1 Spanish speakers from Spain. The work is based on preceding descriptions from Navarro Tomás, 1944; Moraes 1998; Sosa, 1999; Cunha, 2000; Cantero, 2002; Moraes J., 2006; Hidalgo Navarro, 2006; Moraes, 2008; Estebas Vilaplana & Prieto, 2009; Barbosa, 2012; Frota, 2013; Ferreira de Sá, 2013; Silva, 2016. The results show that the most frequent pattern for yes–no questions has  rising movement on the prenuclear region and on the nuclear region. For Wh-questions, the predominant melodic movement is falling. The assertions are characterized by a rising prenuclear contour with a peak generally on the pre-nuclear tonic or post-tonic syllable, followed by an F0 fall along the utterance and a nuclear stress at a medium or low level followed by a low F0. Regarding the duration criterion, in yes-no and Wh-questions, the four informants present similar strategies: they shorten the prenuclear region as well as the nuclear pre-tonic syllables and lengthen nuclear tonic and post-tonic syllables. For the assertions statements, it is observed that the Brazilian informants shorten the prenuclear pre-tonic and post-tonic syllables and lengthen the tonic ones. The Spanish informants, in turn, lengthen pre-nuclear pre-tonic and tonic syllables and shorten post-tonic ones. For the nuclear region, the four informants present similar strategies, thus lengthening tonic and post-tonic syllables.