Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2017 Yes-No Question Intonation in Puerto Rican Spanish and Beijing Mandarin Linxi Zhang Follow this and additional works at the DigiNole: FSU's Digital Repository. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS & SCIENCES YES-NO QUESTION INTONATION IN PUERTO RICAN SPANISH AND BEIJING MANDARIN By LINXI ZHANG A Thesis submitted to the Department of Modern Languages and Linguistics in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts 2017 Linxi Zhang defended this thesis on April 07, 2017. The members of the supervisory committee were: Carolina González Professor Directing Thesis Lara Reglero Committee Member Antje Muntendam Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the thesis has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii This thesis is dedicated to Dr. Carolina González for above all, convincing me that I can do this, and for all the support and guidance she offered me throughout the process. iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would first like to thank my advisor Dr. Carolina Gonzalez for being such a patient and supportive advisor over the process of my research and thesis. She has also been an encouraging professor over the two years of my M.A. study who ignited my interest in Phonetics and Phonology. I would also like to express my gratitude for the other professors I have had at Florida State: Dr. Leeser, Dr. Muntendam, Dr. Reglero, and Dr. Sunderman. I have learnt so much from them, not just knowledge, but also the passion and professionalism in what they are doing. I would like to thank Dr. Leeser for also being such a kind and helpful graduate advisor who listens to my problems with the greatest patience and always offers the best advices. I also appreciate the constructive suggestions that I was given from Professor Martínez- Gil, Professor Campos-Astorkiza, and Professor Erin O´Rourke and many others while presenting this project at the OSUCHill conference at the Ohio State University, as well as the very helpful comments I got from my fellow graduate students at the Terra Incognita Graduate Student Conference at Florida State University. This project would not have been possible without my participants who dedicated their precious time. I would like to give special thanks to my fellow graduate student Linda Núñez, for reading the scripts for my experiment and helping with recruiting participants. Also many thanks to my dearest classmates and friends with whom I have had so much good time even in the hardest struggles as a graduate student. I sincerely thank them for their love and support. Last but not the least, I would like to thank my parents and other family members for their unconditional love and support in whatever I do. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Tables ................................................................................................................................. vi List of Figures ............................................................................................................................... vii Abstract .......................................................................................................................................... ix 1. INTRODUCTION ......................................................................................................................1 2. INTONATION ..........................................................................................................................10 3. TONE AND INTONATION IN CHINESE .............................................................................21 4. METHODOLOGY ....................................................................................................................35 5. RESULTS-SPANISH ...............................................................................................................48 6. RESULTS-CHINESE ...............................................................................................................64 7. CONCLUSION .........................................................................................................................77 APPENDICES ...............................................................................................................................85 A. INFORMED CONSENT FORM ..............................................................................................85 B. MATERIALS ............................................................................................................................86 C. HUMAN SUBJECT APPROVAL LETTERS .........................................................................91 References ......................................................................................................................................92 Biographical Sketch .......................................................................................................................98 v LIST OF TABLES Table 2.1 Summary of intonational patterns of basic utterances in Puerto Rican Spanish from Armstrong (2010: 185-187) ...........................................................................................................16 Table 3.1 Pitch contours and notations of lexical tones in Mandarin adapted from Lee (2005:11, Table 2.1) .......................................................................................................................................24 Table 3.2 Question categories considered in this thesis (*indicate the expected categories) ........32 Table 4.1 Participants information: Spanish ..................................................................................44 Table 4.2 Participants information: Chinese ..................................................................................46 Table 5.1 Distribution of final contours for information-seeking questions .................................49 Table 5.2 Distribution of final contours for echo-surprise questions ............................................52 Table 5.3 Distribution of final contours for confirmatory questions .............................................55 Table 5.4 Distribution of final contours for echo-repetition questions ..........................................59 Table 6.1 Distribution of different syntactic structures in each pragmatic context .......................64 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure 2.1 Intonation of statements in Spanish (Northern Peninsular female) ..............................12 Figure 2.2 Intonation of wh-questions in Spanish (Northern Peninsular female). ........................12 Figure 2.3 Intonation of yes-no questions in Spanish (North Peninsular female). ........................14 Figure 2.4 Intonation of yes-no questions in Caribbean varieties of Spanish, by Puerto Rican speaker ...........................................................................................................................................14 Figure 3.1 Pitch contour of syllable ma with 4 tones ....................................................................22 Figure 5.1 ¿Tus padres viven in Guayama? “Your parents live in Guayama?” Information- seeking question with L+H*L% ....................................................................................................51 Figure 5.2 ¿Hay bizcocho de vainilla? “Is there vanilla cake?” Information-seeking question with L+H*H% ........................................................................................................................................51 Figure 5.3 ¿Tu apartamento tiene lavadora? “Does your apartment have washer?” Information- seeking question with H+L*L%% .................................................................................................52 Figure 5.4 ¿De verdad no tienen Mondongo? “You really don´t have Mondongo?” Echo-surprise question with L+¡H*L% ................................................................................................................53 Figure 5.5 ¿Guillermo de verdad se ganó la lotería? “Did Guillermo really win the lottery?” Echo-surprise question with L*L% ...............................................................................................54 Figure 5.6 ¿En verdad tienes que trabajar el domingo? “Do you really have to work on Sunday?” Echo-surprise question with H+L*L% .........................................................................................54 Figure 5.7 ¿Fuiste a la bodega? “You went to the wine shop?” Confirmatory question with L+H*L% ........................................................................................................................................56 Figure 5.8 ¿Fuiste a la bodega hoy? “You went to the wine shop today?” .. Confirmatory question with L+H*H% ................................................................................................................................57 Figure 5.9 ¿Fuiste a la Muralla Romana? “You went to the Roman Wall?” Confirmatory question with H*+LL% final contour ............................................................................................57 Figure 5.10 ¿Tú vas para Aguagdilla? “(Did) you say you go to Aguadilla?” Echo-repetition question with L+H*L% .................................................................................................................60 Figure 5.11 Intonational variation across contexts P2 ...................................................................61