Recent studies in the field of intonational phonology have shown that information-seeking questions can be distinguished from confirmation-seeking questions by prosodic means in a variety of languages (Armstrong, 2010, for Puerto Rican Spanish; Grice & Savino, 1997, for Bari Italian; Kügler, 2003, for Leipzig German; Mata & Santos, 2010, for European Portuguese; Vanrell, Mascaró, Prieto, & Torres-Tamarit, 2010, for Catalan). However, all these studies have relied on production experiments and little is known about the perceptual relevance of these intonational cues. This paper explores whether Majorcan Catalan listeners distinguish information- and confirmation-seeking questions by means of two distinct nuclear falling pitch accents. Three behavioral tasks were conducted with 20 Majorcan Catalan subjects, namely a semantic congruity test, a rating test, and a classical categorical perception identification/discrimination test. The results show that a difference in pitch scaling on the leading H tone of the H+L* nuclear pitch accent is the main cue used by Majorcan Catalan listeners to distinguish confirmation questions from information-seeking questions. Thus, while a ¡H+L* pitch accent signals an information-seeking question (i.e., the speaker has no expectation about the nature of the answer), the H+L* pitch accent indicates that the speaker is asking about mutually shared information. We argue that these results have implications in representing the distinctions of tonal height in Catalan. The results also support the claim that phonological contrasts in intonation, together with other linguistic strategies, can signal the speakers’ beliefs about the certainty of the proposition expressed.

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This paper develops an analysis of two opaque interactions in Campidanian Sardinian that involve metaphony and two other processes, vowel merger in the suffixal domain and word-final vowel epenthesis. The analysis is developed within the formalism of Turbidity Theory, a model assuming containment, combined with privative features, maximal economy in the representation of segments and relativized scope. The basic idea is that metaphony is computed synchronically as a non-local licensing condition of a feature {high} only if it is underlyingly present. We discuss, on the one hand, cases of non-application of metaphony induced by a subset of high vowel inflectional suffixes. We show that underapplication of metaphony in Campidanian Sardinian is due to insertion of a feature {high} in this set of non-low suffixes lacking {high} underlyingly, which does not need to be licensed as it is not lexical. On the other hand, metaphony also underapplies in the presence of epenthesized high vowels, because their feature {high} is again inserted since these vowels have no correspondent in the input. This paper presents an account that allows the implementation of the interacting processes such as metaphony, vowel merger and word-final vowel epenthesis into one paral- lel OT computation. With the help of work on inventory structure, the opaquely interacting processes can be modelled without relying on rule ordering.

In Catalan, /n/ deletes in word-final position when it is preceded by a stressed vowel. In this paper, we present an analysis that combines the representations of Strict CV and the violable constraints of Optimality Theory, two rarely combined but perfectly compatible analytical tools. We propose that final /n/ floats unassociated below its C position if it cannot be licensed by a following segment. In such circumstances, an entire CV unit is left unidentified at the right edge, a situation which is penalized by the system. Still, when stress is final, this rightmost CV unit is identified by the weak branch of a trochaic foot. As a result, the /n/ may remain afloat. However, when stress is not final, the final CV remains otherwise unidentified, and so /n/ must associate to it, even though it is unlicensed.