Intonational phonology of Catalan and its dialectal varieties

Prieto, Pilar; Borràs-Comes, Joan; Cabré, Teresa; Crespo-Sendra, Verònica; Mascaró, Ignasi; Roseano, Paolo; Sichel-Bazin, Rafèu; Vanrell, María del Mar

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199685332.003.0002

Cited by 75 publications

(49 citation statements)

References 87 publications

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“…Our analysis reveals that the pitch range difference between CQs and NEQs is significant for speakers of both geographical regions. This is in line with findings from other Romance languages that equally mark non-neutral questions by a wider pitch range ( [9], [10], [19] and [20]). As a basic principle, the intonational meaning of CQs is conveyed acoustically, through differences in the pitch range of the nuclear configuration.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

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The intonation of echo wh-questions in Ecuadorian Spanish

Huttenlauch¹,

Egger²,

Wochner³

et al. 2016

Speech Prosody 2016

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In Romance languages, neutral echo wh-questions and counterexpectational (i.e., non-neutral or incredulous) echo wh-questions are usually distinguished by tonal differences in the nuclear contour. In this study, we show that Ecuadorian Spanish does not differentiate between those question types in terms of tonal targets, but by expanding the pitch range in the nuclear region. Results drawn from a production experiment based on semi-spontaneous speech with nine native speakers show that neutral as well as non-neutral echo wh-questions are realized with the same nuclear configurations, typically a rising one (L* H%). However, counterexpectational whquestions are realized with a significantly larger pitch range than their neutral counterparts (with a difference of 2.03 semitones). From a diatopic point of view, our data indicate that there are prosodic differences in the realization of questions between the Andean and the coastal region. Speakers from the latter region realize rising as well as low and falling nuclear configurations (L* H%, L* L% and H* L%) and use a lower mean pitch. We hereby provide intonational support for the well-known division between tierras bajas 'lowlands' and tierras altas 'highlands' used for capturing the dialectal phonological variation on the segmental level of Latin-American Spanish.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 92%

“…Next to the tonal differences, all varieties also distinguish NEQs from CQs by expanding the pitch range of the CQs ( [5], [6], [7] and [8]). The combination of tonal movement and pitch excursion is also attested in other Romance languages, such as Italian [9] or Catalan [10].…”

Section: Echo Wh-questionsmentioning

confidence: 80%

The intonation of echo wh-questions in Ecuadorian Spanish

Huttenlauch¹,

Egger²,

Wochner³

et al. 2016

Speech Prosody 2016

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“…To combine the results from our two analyses, the rising-then-falling contour in condition 0 in both dialects is actually consistent with the presence of a rising pitch accent associated with the stressed syllable in the verb, which, in prenuclear position, tends to present a delayed peak (L + <H* in Cat_ToBI notation; Prieto et al 2015). The presence of a delayed peak explains why the highest point in the contour appears after the stressed syllable.…”

Section: Phrasal Accent and F0 Contoursmentioning

confidence: 61%

Stressed postverbal pronominals in Catalan

Nadeu

Simonet

Llompart

2017

Probus

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Majorcan Catalan postverbal pronominal elements are typically described as being prominent due to stress shift from their host. This study sheds light on the prosodic phonology of these pronouns through the analysis of duration, vowel quality, and f0 in verb + pronominal sequences, which are compared to a baseline condition without pronominals and to the same sequences in a Catalan variety without stress shift. Our results show acoustic differences in the realization of pronominals in these varieties. The duration and vowel quality patterns are consistent with the stress shift account of postverbal pronominals in Majorcan Catalan. Analysis of f0 contours also reveals phonological differences across varieties. Whereas stressed postverbal pronominals are not rare in Romance, Majorcan Catalan is one of a much reduced number of varieties within the Romance domain, where the attachment of a pronominal element to a host triggers "true" stress shift rather than an additional prominence on the pronominal element, like Sardinian or Neapolitan.

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“…Calling contours have been shown to have strong similarities in many languages, in particular in the case of the chanted version characterized by a rise followed by a step down from the high level to a sustained pitch (Ladd, 2008). In most varieties of Portuguese, and also in Catalan and Spanish (Frota, 2014;Frota et al, 2015;Hualde & Prieto, 2015;Prieto, 2014;Prieto et al, 2015), a similar pitch pattern is found with a rising movement into a peak on the accented syllable and a following step down into a sustained final pitch that spreads in the post-tonic stretch. The vocative chant contour is illustrated in Figure 4 for Brazilian Portuguese (the variety from Bahia, in the North of Brazil) and Catalan.…”

Section: The Calling Contourmentioning

confidence: 89%

“…The first case I address is the rise-fall pitch pattern that has been recurrently described for narrow focus statements in the European varieties of Portuguese (hereafter EP; Cruz, 2013;Fernandes, 2007;Frota, 2000Frota, , 2002Frota, , 2014Frota et al, 2015), in most Catalan varieties (Prieto, 2014;Prieto et al, 2009;Prieto et al, 2015), in Spanish (Hualde & Prieto, 2015;Vanrell et al, 2013), and in most Italian varieties (Gili Fivela et al, 2015;. The contour is illustrated in Figure 1, for EP and Catalan.…”

Section: Rise-fall Pitch Pattern and The Narrow Focus Contourmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surface and Structure: Transcribing Intonation within and across Languages

Frota

2016

Laboratory Phonology

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Intonation is the phonologically structured variation in phonetic features, primarily pitch, to express phrase-level meanings. As in other speech sound domains, analyzing intonation involves mapping continuously variable physical parameters to categories. The categories of intonation are organized in a set of relations and rule-governed distributions that define the intonation system of a language. From physical realizations, as shown by pitch tracks, surface or phonetic tonal patterns can be identified in terms of tonal targets. Whether surface patterns correspond or not to categories within a given intonation system requires looking at their distributions and contrastiveness. In this paper, I assume the view that a transcription is an analysis of the intonation system, which ultimately aims to identify the contrastive intonation categories of a given language and establish how they signal meaning. Under this view, it is crucial to discuss the ways surface pitch patterns and structural pitch patterns (or phonological categories) are related. Given that intonational analysis is driven by system-internal considerations and that cues to a given category can vary across languages, it is also important to address the issue of how a language-specific transcription can be reconciled with the need and ability to do cross-language comparison of intonation. Bearing on these two issues, I discuss surface and structure in intonational analysis, drawing on mismatches between (dis)similarities in the phonetics and phonology of pitch contours, across languages and language varieties.

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Intonational phonology of Catalan and its dialectal varieties

Cited by 75 publications

References 87 publications

The intonation of echo wh-questions in Ecuadorian Spanish

The intonation of echo wh-questions in Ecuadorian Spanish

Stressed postverbal pronominals in Catalan

Surface and Structure: Transcribing Intonation within and across Languages

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