ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2014
ISCA Archive SpeechProsody 2014

Sentence type and prenuclear contours in Brazilian Portuguese: production and perception

Izabel Seara, Juan Manuel Sosa, Vanessa Nunes

In this paper we examine how the interrogative sentence mode is encoded in some dialects of Brazilian Portuguese (BP) and how questions differ from their declarative counterparts. Our aim is to identify which specific prosodic features, including prenuclear pitch range values, are systematically associated with the interrogative mode of enunciation. In the interdialectal comparison, the speakers from Blumenau (SC) and Aracaju (SE) distinguish themselves from the speakers of the other varieties in their prenuclear patterns, significantly higher for the yes/no interrogatives than the declarative counterparts. This is not the case with other dialects in our study. Perception tests corroborated the production results.