Brazilian Portuguese
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I International Symposium on Variation in Portuguese 28-30 APRIL THE INTONATION OF YES-NO QUESTIONS IN THREE VARIETIES OF BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE 1 Joelma Castelo & Sónia Frota (Universidade de Lisboa) INTRODUCTION The main goal of this study is to provide a phonological analysis of the information- seeking yes-no questions of Brazilian Portuguese as spoken in Aracaju, Rio de Janeiro and Florianópolis. Baiano Fluminense Sulista The Dialectal Division of Brazilian Portuguese (Nascentes, 1953) 2 STRUCTURE OF THE PRESENTATION • Introduction • Background • Research Questions • Corpus and Methods • Results and discussion • Conclusions 3 Background Intonation of yes-no question across languages: low/falling (Catalan, Chickasaw, Palermo Italian); High/rising (Dutch, Standard Italian, Standard European Portuguese, Japanese); Peak alignment (Southern Italian varieties). (Ladd, 1996, 2008; Gussenhoven, 2002, 2004 ; Frota, 2002; Sun-Ah Jun, 2005, 2014) The yes-no question is the main locus of intonational variation across varieties in many languages, like in Portuguese, Catalan and Italian. (Frota et al. in press; Prieto 2014; Grice et al., 2005; Savino 2012) 4 Background The intonation of yes-no question in Portuguese (Silva, 2011; Vigário & Frota, 2003; Cruz, 2013; Frota et al., in press) European Portuguese Brazilian Portuguese Northern central-southern Northeastern Southeastern (Rising-falling) (Rising) (Rising) (Rising-falling) L* HL% (Braga) H+L*LH% (Lisboa) L*+HH% L+H*L% L*+HH% (Algarve) (João Pessoa, (Rio de Janeiro) L*H% (Alentejo) Salvador) L*+HL% (São Paulo e Minas Gerais) 5 RESEARCH QUESTIONS What are the nuclear contours of yes-no questions in Aracaju, Rio de Janeiro and Florianópolis? Does the phonetic implementation of tunes in the segmental string indicate any systematic differences among varieties? What is the phonological structure of the nuclear pitch accent and boundary tone that accounts for the differences observed in the surface F0 contour? 6 THEORETICAL SUPPORT Autosegmental Metrical Model and Intonational Phonology: intonation has a phonological organization, based on relations of prominence determined by the prosodic structure of each language. (Pierrehumbert, 1980; Ladd, 1996, 2008; Gussehoven, 2004; Frota, 2000, 2014) In Portuguese, the nuclear contour of the intonational phrase is composed by two elements: pitch accent and boundary tone. 7 CORPUS AND METHODS Sentences: 27 sentences, varied in lexical stress (Frota, 2002; Silva, in progress). • Ela foi ver [o mar? • Ela foi ver [a Marina? • Os rapazes compraram [lâminas? Subjects: 4 female native speakers per region, aged between 20 and 45 . Data: 648 utterances (27x2x4x3) produced in reading task. Utterances were analysed according to the Portuguese ToBI System (Frota, 2014), with three annotation tiers: Orthography, Tones and Break Indices. 8 Results F0 ALIGNMENT IN PAROXITONE NUCLEAR WORDS A rising contour through the A rising contour along the stressed syllable in Rio de stressed and post-stressed Janeiro syllable in Florianópolis. Figure 1: F0 contour of utterance “Did she go to see Marina?", Figure 2: F0 contour of utterance " Did she go to see Marina?", produced by speaker from Rio de Janeiro. produced by speaker from Florianópolis. 9 RESULTS F0 alignment in proparoxitone nuclear word A rising contour at the stressed A rising contour along the syllable in Rio de Janeiro. stressed and post-stressed syllable in Florianópolis. Figure 3: F0 contour of utterance “Did the boys buy blades?", Figure 4: F0 contour of utterance “Did the boys buy blades?", produced by speaker from Rio de Janeiro produced by speaker from Florianópolis. 10 RESULTS F0 peak alignment per F0 peak alignment per variety subject Coefficientsa Model Unstandardized Coefficients Standardized t Sig. 95,0% Confidence Interval Coefficients for B B Std. Error Beta Lower Bound Upper Bound 11 (Constant) -10,844 4,963 -2,185 ,031 -20,666 -1,022 1 Localidade 43,688 7,019 ,485 6,224 ,000 29,797 57,578 a. Dependent Variable: H_distance_onset RESULTS F0 alignment in proparoxitone nuclear words A low tone on the stressed syllable and rising-falling contour in the last post-stressed syllable in Florianópolis and Aracaju. Figure 5: F0 contour of utterance “Did the boys buy blades?", Figure 6: F0 contour of utterance “Did the boys buy blades?", produced by speaker from Florianópolis. produced by speaker from Aracaju. 12 Results BOUNDARY TONE VARIATION IN ARACAJU A rising-falling contour A rising contour Figure 7: F0 contour of utterance “Did the boys buy blades?", produced by Figure 8: F0 contour of utterance "Did she go to see Débora?", speaker from Aracaju. produced by speaker from Aracaju. 13 Results TRUNCATION OF L BOUNDARY TONE IN RIO DE JANEIRO AND ARACAJU Figure 9: F0 contour of utterance “Did the boys buy blades?", produced by Figure 10: F0 contour of utterance “Did the boys buy blades?", produced by speaker from Rio de Janeiro. speaker from Aracaju. 14 Figure 11: F0 contour of utterance “Did she go to see André?", produced by Figure 12: F0 contour of utterance “Did she go to see André?", produced by speaker from Rio de Janeiro. speaker from Aracaju. RESULTS Phonological Analysis Aracaju Rio de Janeiro Florianópolis 15 DISCUSSION These results confirm previous observations on the melodic shape of yes-no questions in some Southern varieties. (Cunha, 2000; Moraes, 2008; Silva, 2011, Nunes 2011) The phonological analyses for rising-falling contour of yes-no questions across languages. (Grice et al., 2000; Grice et al., 2005, Vigário&Frota, 2003) 16 CONCLUSION Yes-no questions involve a LHL tune in the three analyzed varieties, with truncation of the L tone in cases of final stress in Rio de Janeiro and Aracaju. Systematic differences among varieties: alignment of the peak, which is explained by differences in phonological association between the tone and the segmental string. These systemic differences need further LHL investigation in additional varieties. L* HL% L*(+H)HL% 17 L+H* L% ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS All speakers involved. The InAPoP team, specially for helping to review data annotation. Joseph Butler and Nádia Barros, for the English revision. Vanessa Nunes, Carolina Serra and Izabel Seara, for helping with the selection of subjects in Aracaju, Rio de Janeiro and Florianópolis. The PhD research of Joelma Silva is funded by Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (nº 094912-4). This research was developed within the following project: InAPoP project (PTDC/CLE-LIN/119787/2010), funded by Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia/MCTES (PIDDAC) SELECTED REFERENCES FROTA, Sónia (2002). “Nuclear falls and rises in European Portuguese: a phonological analysis of declarative and question intonation” Probus 14, 113-146. FROTA, Sónia (2014). “The intonational phonology of European Portuguese.” Sun-Ah Jun (ed.) Prosodic Typology II. Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 6-42. Ladd, D. Robert (2008). Intonational Phonology. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. MORAES, João (2008). “The Pitch Accents in Brazilian Portuguese: analysis by synthesis” In: Fourth Conference on Speech Prosody, 2008, Campinas. Proceedings of the Speech Prosody. Campinas: Unicamp. Nascentes, Antenor (1953). O linguajar carioca. Rio de Janeiro: Organização Simões. NUNES, Vanessa (2011). Análises entonacionais de sentenças declarativas e interrogativas totais nos falares florianopolitano e lageano. Master dissertation in Linguistics. Florianópolis, UFSC. SAVINO, Michelina (2012). “The intonation of polar questions in Italian: where is the rise?” Journal of the International Phonetic Association, vol. 42, 23-48. SILVA, Joelma (2011). Caracterização prosódica dos falares brasileiros: as orações interogativas totais. Master dissertation in Portuguese Language. Rio de Janeiro, Faculdade de Letras, UFRJ. 19 .