Prosodic Variation (with)in Languages - Intonation, Phrasing and Segments - Marisa Cruz

Prosodic Variation (with)in Languages - Intonation, Phrasing and Segments - Marisa Cruz

2. Asking Questions across Portuguese Varieties

Prosodic Variation (with)in Languages - Intonation, Phrasing and Segments - Marisa Cruz

Marisa Cruz [+-]
University of Lisbon
Marisa Cruz is a Researcher at the Phonetics and Phonology Lab (CLUL/FLUL), University of Lisbon. She obtained a PhD on prosodic variation in European Portuguese (phrasing, intonation and rhythm) in 2013, in the same institution. She is currently member of the Direction Board of Center of Linguistics of the University of Lisbon, where she investigates visual prosody in European Portuguese, by comparing the prosodic role of gestures in spoken language with the prosody of Portuguese Sign Language. Her research interests also cover language acquisition and language disorders.
Verònica Crespo-Sendra [+-]
Institut Rovira-Forns, Santa Perpètua de Mogoda, Barcelona
Verònica Crespo-Sendra is Teacher at the Institut Rovira-Forns, Santa Perpètua de Mogoda, Barcelona, since 2015. She obtained her PhD on the intonational phonology of Catalan dialects in 2011, at Universitat Pompeu Fabra, Barcelona, and had a postdoctoral fellowship within the Interactive Atlas of the Prosody of Portuguese project (2012–2015) at the Phonetics and Phonology Lab, University of Lisbon, in 2014–2015.
Joelma Castelo [+-]
Universidade Estadual do Paraná, Brazil
Joelma Castelo is Lecturer at the Center of Human Sciences and Education of Universidade Estadual do Paraná, Brazil, and postdoctoral researcher at the University of São Paulo, Brazil. Her research focuses on the phonetics and phonology of intonational variation in Portuguese. Her most relevant publications are Variação entoacional dos enunciados interrogativos, The yes–no question contour in Brazilian Portuguese (Castelo & Frota, 2017), and The perception of yes–no questions across varieties of Brazilian Portuguese (Castelo et al., 2018).
Sónia Frota [+-]
University of Lisbon
Sónia Frota is Full Professor of Experimental Linguistics at the University of Lisbon. Her research seeks to understand the properties of prosodic systems (phrasing, intonation, and rhythm), the extent to which they vary across and within languages, and how they are acquired by infants and help to bootstrap the learning of language. She is the editor in chief of the Journal of Portuguese Linguistics (since 2002), and the Director of the Center of Linguistics at the University of Lisbon (since 2020).

Description

Recent research on yes-no question intonation in European and Brazilian Portuguese suggests that there is a high variety of nuclear patterns of yes-no questions not only between European and Brazilian varieties but also across European Portuguese varieties (Frota et al. 2015, Silva 2014, Cruz et al. 2014, among others). However, there is a lack of studies that include a detailed description and comparison of yes-no questions in different varieties of Portuguese. The first goal of the current study is to describe the intonation of yes-no questions in European and Brazilian Portuguese (EP and BP, respectively) by analyzing a wide range of utterances and regions covered within the project Interactive Atlas of Prosody of Portuguese. Considering the fact that interrogatives can have different pragmatic functions, we decided to analyze yes-no questions also from a pragmatic point of view, thus looking at neutral and focused yes-no questions. Studies have shown that speakers can signal the difference between neutral and focused questions intonationally, in various languages (Frota 2002, Savino & Grice 2007, Lee et al. 2008, Truckenbrodt 2009, Crespo-Sendra 2011). Some studies have found a gradient contrast between the two types of questions, while other studies indicate that the contrast is expressed categorically. Therefore, the aims of this paper are: a) to analyze and compare phonologically the nuclear configuration of neutral and focused yes-no questions across Portuguese varieties; and b) to investigate the strategies that EP and BP speakers use to distinguish between neutral and focalized yes/no questions.

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Citation

Cruz, Marisa; Crespo-Sendra, Verònica ; Castelo, Joelma; Frota, Sónia . 2. Asking Questions across Portuguese Varieties. Prosodic Variation (with)in Languages - Intonation, Phrasing and Segments. Equinox eBooks Publishing, United Kingdom. p. 36-70 Apr 2022. ISBN 9781781794685. https://www.equinoxpub.com/home/view-chapter/?id=30066. Date accessed: 29 Mar 2024 doi: 10.1558/equinox.30066. Apr 2022

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