Prosodic phrasing of the sequence connector “aí” on spontaneous speech and reading

Abstract

In this paper, we analyze the prosodic phrasing of the sequence connector “aí” on spontaneous speech and reading of Brazilian Portuguese speakers from Rio de Janeiro. . The analysis is based on two phonological theories: the Prosodic Phonology and the Autosegmental Metrical Intonational Phonology and on the theory and methodology proposed by Experimental Acoustic Phonetics, using the software PRAAT. Results showed that: (i) the item is more frequently phrased integrated to its following IP, working as the first prosodic word of this domain, in its pre-nuclear position; (ii) the nuclear contour of the IP before “aí” typically presents the melodic movement of neutral declarative sentences in Portuguese /HL* L%/; (iii) the pitch accent more frequently associated to “aí” is /LH*/; (iv) when the form “aí” constitutes an independent IP, the high/rising boundary tone /(L)H%/ is more frequent, which characterizes the continuous contour in BP; and (v) pauses have a different behavior on spontaneous speech and reading.