Melodic constructions in Spanish: Metrical structure determines the association properties of intonational tones

Abstract

This paper explores phrase-length-related alternations in the association of tones to positions in metrical structure in two melodic constructions of Spanish. An imitation-and-completion task eliciting (a) the low–falling–rising contour and (b) the circumflex contour on intonation phrases (IPs) of one, two, and three prosodic words revealed that, although the focus structure and pragmatic context is constant across conditions, phrases containing one prosodic word differ in their nuclear (i.e. final) pitch accents and edge tones from phrases containing more than one prosodic word. For contour (a), short intonation phrases (e.g. [Manolo]IP) were produced with a low accent followed by a high edge tone (L* H% in ToBI notation), whereas longer phrases (e.g. [El hermano de la amiga de Manolo]IP ‘Manolo's friend's brother’) had a low accent on the first stressed syllable, a rising accent on the last stressed syllable, and a low edge tone (L* L+H* L%). For contour (b), short phrases were produced with a high–rise (L+H* ¡H%), whereas longer phrases were produced with an initial accentual rise followed by an upstepped rise–fall (L+H* ¡H* L%). These findings imply that the common practice of describing the structure of intonation contours as consisting of a constant nuclear pitch accent and following edge tone is not adequate for modeling Spanish intonation. To capture the observed melodic alternations, we argue for clearer separation between tones and metrical structure, whereby intonational tones do not necessarily have an intrinsic culminative or delimitative function (i.e. as pitch accents or as edge tones). Instead, this function results from melody-specific principles of tonal–metrical association.

Deconstructing information structure

“…35 Summing up, the distribution of the tones of all-new, pragmatically neutral, declarative sentences in Standard English is characterizable via crosslinguistically supported phonological markedness constraints targeting the relation between tone and prosodic structure in PO representations. This phonological markedness approach meshes well with the recent proposal of Torreira & Grice (2018) that metrical/prosodic structure plays a role in determining the association properties of 'intonational tones' in languages without lexical tone.…”

The intonation of yes–no questions in Luganda

“…According to the model in Table 2, the f0 peak in a question with a lexical high tone is 31.7 Hz higher than the corresponding statement, all else being equal. This upstep effect is similar to the raising of H% after Hin English polar questions (Pierrehumbert 1980), or the raising of intonational H after H * in circumflex question intonation in Spanish (Torreira & Grice 2018).…”

Intonation, <i>yes</i> and <i>no</i>

“…Thus, we believe a more accurate transcription might be %H L* L-H%, with the possibility of iterated L* pitch accents after the initial %H in cases where multiple words are accented. 19 In Iberian Spanish, Torreira & Grice (2017) demonstrate experimentally that tunes may have one form when produced with a single prosodic word, but another, longer form when produced with two or more prosodic words. We think something similar may be happening with English CC, although more phonological work is needed.…”