Secondary correlates of question signaling in Manchego Spanish
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Nicholas Henriksen
Abstract
This paper reports on an acoustic analysis of secondary prosodic cues of question signaling (baseline slope, speech rate, stressed syllable duration), comparing declarative statements, declarative questions, and wh-questions in Peninsular Spanish. The signaling of questions has been reported as more complex than the ‘high vs. low pitch’ dichotomy often referenced in the literature. Our analysis reveals that baseline slope may be the best phonetic property for categorizing wh-questions separately from statements and declarative questions; measures of speech rate and syllable duration are not a straightforward heuristic for differentiating sentence types. The distributional and statistical results are contrary to van Heuven & Haan’s (2000, 2002) idea that there is a relative prosodic marking of question type based on the number of lexico-syntactic devices used to signal a question. We propose that the tonal categories that comprise an intonational melody may account for tempo differences within and across question types, along the lines of Gussenhoven’s (2004) effort code.
Abstract
This paper reports on an acoustic analysis of secondary prosodic cues of question signaling (baseline slope, speech rate, stressed syllable duration), comparing declarative statements, declarative questions, and wh-questions in Peninsular Spanish. The signaling of questions has been reported as more complex than the ‘high vs. low pitch’ dichotomy often referenced in the literature. Our analysis reveals that baseline slope may be the best phonetic property for categorizing wh-questions separately from statements and declarative questions; measures of speech rate and syllable duration are not a straightforward heuristic for differentiating sentence types. The distributional and statistical results are contrary to van Heuven & Haan’s (2000, 2002) idea that there is a relative prosodic marking of question type based on the number of lexico-syntactic devices used to signal a question. We propose that the tonal categories that comprise an intonational melody may account for tempo differences within and across question types, along the lines of Gussenhoven’s (2004) effort code.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgments vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
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Part I First and second language acquisition
- Devil or angel in the details? 3
- Effects of Spanish use on the production of Catalan vowels by early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals 33
- Cues to dialectal discrimination in early infancy 55
- Phonology versus phonetics in loanword adaptations 71
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Part II Prosody
- A preliminary study of penultimate accentuation in French 93
- Sentence modality and tempo in Neapolitan Italian 109
- Glottalization at phrase boundaries in Tuscan and Roman Italian 125
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Part III Segments
- Acoustic analysis of syllable-final /k/ in Northern Peninsular Spanish 151
- The phonetic basis of a phonological pattern 171
- The production of rhotics in onset clusters by Spanish monolinguals and Spanish-Basque bilinguals 193
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Part IV Methodology
- Secondary correlates of question signaling in Manchego Spanish 211
- Modeling prosody and rhythmic distributions in Spanish speech groups 239
- Categories and gradience in intonation 259
- Subject Index 285
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgments vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
-
Part I First and second language acquisition
- Devil or angel in the details? 3
- Effects of Spanish use on the production of Catalan vowels by early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals 33
- Cues to dialectal discrimination in early infancy 55
- Phonology versus phonetics in loanword adaptations 71
-
Part II Prosody
- A preliminary study of penultimate accentuation in French 93
- Sentence modality and tempo in Neapolitan Italian 109
- Glottalization at phrase boundaries in Tuscan and Roman Italian 125
-
Part III Segments
- Acoustic analysis of syllable-final /k/ in Northern Peninsular Spanish 151
- The phonetic basis of a phonological pattern 171
- The production of rhotics in onset clusters by Spanish monolinguals and Spanish-Basque bilinguals 193
-
Part IV Methodology
- Secondary correlates of question signaling in Manchego Spanish 211
- Modeling prosody and rhythmic distributions in Spanish speech groups 239
- Categories and gradience in intonation 259
- Subject Index 285
