The aim of this paper is to compare the multimodal production of questions in two different language varieties: Brazilian Portuguese and Mexican Spanish. Descriptions of the auditory and visual cues of two speech acts, assertions and questions, are presented based on Brazilian and Mexican corpora. The sentence “Como você sabe” was produced as an yes-no (echo) question and an assertion by ten speakers (five male) from Rio de Janeiro and the sentence “Apaga la tele” was produced as a yes-no question and an assertion by five speakers (three male) from Mexico City. The results show that, whereas the Brazilian Portuguese and Mexican Spanish assertions are produced with different F0 contours and different facial expressions, questions in both languages are produced with specific F0 contours but similar facial expressions. The outcome of this comparative study suggests that lowering the eyebrows, tightening the lid and wrinkling the nose can be considered question markers in both language varieties.
Resumo: Este trabalho tem como objetivo descrever diferenças entre variedades dialetais do português falado em Salvador, Fortaleza e Rio de Janeiro, Brasil, tanto nas sentenças declarativas quanto nas interrogativas. A análise de parâmetros prosódicos (frequência fundamental, duração, intensidade) é feita no núcleo final de sentenças oxítonas, paroxítonas e proparoxítonas. Há diferenças prosódicas sistemáticas entre as duas modalidades (declarativa e interrogativa): um tom alto ou subida de F0 no núcleo das interrogativas e, ao contrário, um tom baixo ou descida de F0 no núcleo das declarativas. Variações dialetais também são observadas. Os acentos tonais nucleares H + L*L% para as declarativas e L + H*L% para as interrogativas, propostos por Moraes (2008), são observados nos falantes do Rio de Janeiro -sendo este último truncado ou comprimido
In this paper, we described the command intonational contours in the twenty-five Brazilian capitals included in the corpus “Linguistic Atlas of Brazil” (ALiB). This work aims at: (i) describing the intonational contour of twenty-five capitals from the corpus ALiB; (ii) comparing the intonation of the directive speech acts in the five Brazilian regions and (iii) proposing a phonological representation of the variation of this contour. Our corpus is composed of fifty imperative utterances produced by male and female speakers of the analyzed capitals. We observed that there is a predominance of a rising F0 movement in the prenucleus of the command contours with the phonological notation L*+H or L+H* in the twentyfive Brazilian capitals. In the nuclear position, the pitch accent can be defined for the majority of the capitals as H+L*L%, a falling F0 movement, with the variant H*L% for the capital Belém (PA). The capital that presented a different F0 movement in the nucleus was Florianópolis (SC) that showed the predominance of a rising-falling F0 movement represented as L+H*L%.
Gender differences in spatial abilities favor males in both childhood and adulthood. During early development, this discrepancy can be attributed, among other things, to the influence of an early testosterone surge in boys, societal stereotypes, and expectations about gender. In the present work, we created a spatial task (including letter rotation and letter mirroring) which used letters as stimuli and evaluated the performance of school-aged children (6–10 years old). During this age period, children are being taught literacy skills which rely on the reorganization of cortical networks and the breakdown of mirror generalization. We divided our sample (N = 142, 73 females) into two age groups: 1st–2nd (literacy acquisition; N = 70, 33 females) and 3rd–5th (literacy consolidation; N = 72, 40 females) graders. While boys performed significantly better in letter rotation in the older group, girls’ performance remained substandard in both groups. This pattern is reversed for the mirror task, with older girls outperforming their younger counterparts and boys having similar performance in the two groups. Since the age period of our sample is not associated with large variations in the levels of reproductive steroids, we propose that the similarity of performance between younger and older girls in mental rotation of letters could be associated with society’s traditional attitudes and expectations on the relationship between visual–spatial skills and gender. As for the mirror task, while only girls had a significant difference between the two age groups, boys did show an improvement, as expected for the inhibition of mirror generalization for letters during reading acquisition.
Este artigo descreve foneticamente os contornos melódicos de três atos de fala diretivos (ordem, pedido e súplica) em português do Brasil e em espanhol de variedade mexicana. Para tanto, foi utilizado um corpus de fala atuada, com a seleção de enunciados com a entoação dos três atos diretivos em cada língua. Em seguida, houve a aplicação de testes auditivos para o reconhecimento da intenção do locutor, bem como para a legitimação de sua performance, além de uma análise acústica para a caracterização do padrão entonacional de cada ato. Os resultados sugerem que a entoação pode constituir um dos mecanismos para a distinção dos três tipos de atos de fala diretivos, devido a diferenças entonacionais na produção de cada ato nas duas línguas analisadas.
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