The present paper deals with the description and characterization of the melodic patterns of absolute interrogative utterances in northern German spontaneous speech from an intonation and semantic-pragmatic point of view. This research has been carried out based on 246 absolute questions from spontaneous speech settings by multiple speakers of different gender, age, and education by applying the Melodic Analysis of Speech (MAS) method developed by Cantero (2002,

In this study, we analyse a sample of 76 utterances drawn from a corpus of spontaneous speech from the north of England. The selected statements present a declarative structure with different pragmatic functions (yes/no questions, echo questions, tag questions, and rhetorical questions). The objective of this study is to observe and describe the intonation of questions with a declarative structure in English from the north of England in spontaneous speech. Likewise, the pertinent bibliographic review is carried out for its subsequent discussion in view of the results obtained. The analysis is carried out in Praat, through the Melodic Analysis of Speech method (CANTERO, 2002) that allows the extraction of stylized, quantifiable and comparable melodic curves. As a result of this analysis, we obtain five different melodic that we can define as rising (21%), falling (50%), rising-falling (13%), final inflection with raised nucleus (4%), and declination and final rising inflection (12%).

One of the main features on which there seems to be a great agreement among researchers is that German modal particles are mostly used in oral language. However, after reviewing the literature ever since one of the most representative works in this field was made and after considering the characteristics that are derived and that define this group of words as a distinct group from other grammatical categories, we observe, on the one hand, that the relationship between German modal particles and intonation is an aspect hardly developed and, on the other hand, that this relationship is analysed taking into account a corpus of written data. In this paper we purpose to change this point of view and recover the initial assumption. German modal particles would have to be analysed taking into account their natural context where they are used and, in order to do that, they would have to be studied exploring the interrelations between several oral codes, because it is there where their different modal meanings arise.

Resumen:El enfoque auditivo propone el concepto de mediación fónica (Cantero, 2002b y 2004) como proceso clave en la didáctica de la lectoescritura y consiste en la identificación de las unidades prosódicas del texto como estrategia de acceso a la comprensión lectora (Recio, 2012). La coestructuración multimodal entre entonación y gestualidad se ha demostrado en estudios pioneros sobre comunicación (Condon, 1979; Kendon, 1987), constatándose recientemente que dicha relación es un elemento esencial del código oral (Torregrosa, 2006 y 2011). Basándonos en este marco conceptual, el objetivo de este trabajo consiste en ofrecer nuevas claves didácticas relacionadas con las estrategias de inicio en la lectura considerando la relación entre el enfoque auditivo en la lectura y la coestructuración multimodal en el discurso. Abstract:The auditory approach proposes the concept of phonic mediation (Cantero, 2002b and 2004) as a key process in teaching literacy, consisting of identifying prosodic units in the text as an access strategy for reading comprehension (Recio, 2012). The multimodal co-structuring between intonation and gesticulation has been proved in several pioneer works on communication (Condon, 1979; Kondon, 1987). Recently, Torregrosa (2006 and 2011) shows that kinesic-intonational costructuring is a key aspect of the oral code. Taking into account this conceptual framework, we provide new didactic clues related to strategies in early reading, considering the relationship between the auditory approach to reading and the multimodal costructuring (intonation and gesticulation) in discourse