ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2008
ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2008

Focus and intonational marking in boundaries dialects: brazilian portuguese and Uruguayan Spanish in yes/no questions

Claudia Cunha, Glaucia Felismino, Leticia Rebollo, Maristela Silva

This paper describes the distinct tonal configurations of absolute questions in Brazilian Portuguese and in Uruguayan Spanish. Two sub varieties of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and two sub varieties of Uruguayan Spanish (US) are considered. In doing so, this experimental study argues for the existence of prosodic variation between melodic contours of yes/no questions, comparing the realisations from Rio de Janeiro (RJ) and Santana do Livramento (SL), on the Brazilian side, and those from Rivera (R) e Montevideo (M), on the Uruguayan side.