Acoustic analysis of tonicity of relative words in indefinite free relative constructions

Los relativos en las relativas libres indefinidas (No tiene con quién hablar) seperciben en ocasiones como tónicos y otras veces como átonos. Nuestro objetivoes analizar la naturaleza del acento en estas relativas para determinar, mediante lasmedidas de los parámetros acústicos que configuran el acento (intensidad, duracióny frecuencia), si los relativos se realizan como palabras tónicas o átonas. El análisisacústico de los datos se ha realizado con el programa Praat y el análisis estadísticousando el programa SPSS. Una primera conclusión de nuestro estudio es que ladiferencia en tonicidad entre interrogativos y relativos no es tan robusta como seasume en la bibliografía, pues solo hay diferencias significativas en el parámetrode la duración y únicamente en las palabras qu- quien y cuando. En segundo lugar,los resultados muestran que los valores de intensidad de estos relativos se acercana los de los controles tónicos, especialmente en el caso del pronombre que, si bienlos datos son complejos y presentan mucha variación.Relatives in indefinite free relatives (No tiene con quien hablar ‘He doesn’t haveanybody to talk to’) are sometimes considered stressed and sometimes asunstressed. Our aim is to analize the nature of the accent in this kind of relativewords in order to determine, by measuring the acoustic correlates of stress(intensity, duration and frequency), if these relative words are stressed orunstressed. We have carried out an acoustic and statistical analysis of the data withPraat and SPSS programs. Our results shows, in the first place, that interrogativesand relatives are not so different in tonicity, as the only parameter which allows todifferenciate between them is duration, and just in the case of who and when. In thesecond place, the intensity values of the relatives that appear in indefinite freerelatives are similar to the values stressed controls (interrogatives), specially thepronoun que, but this kind of data is very complex and shows a lot of variation

Spanish non-continuants at the phonology-phonetics interface

This paper takes a series of lenition phenomena from Gran Canarian Spanish as a point of departure to discuss the influence of phonology on the phonetics component. Based on phonetic and phonological data, it can be concluded that a blocking effect ensues between the process of coda deletion and post-vocalic voicing, giving rise to phonetic opacity. Against the assumption that the latter process is phonological in nature, acous-tic data suggest that it is highly gradient, coarticulatory and variable, in which case it is inexplicable why it is blocked by phonological segment deletion. The proposed solution set forth in this paper is that the phonetic component has access to deep structure beyond featural specifications of sounds. What is more, evidence from prosody indicates that structural information concerning prosodic boundaries is also transposed into phonetics and influences production. Thus, the type and amount of information computed at the phonetics-phonology interface needs to be revised and supplemented by turbid structures in order to account for surface variability and both inter- and intra-speaker differences

Spanish non-continuants at the phonology-phonetics interface

This paper takes a series of lenition phenomena from Gran Canarian Spanish as a point of departure to discuss the influence of phonology on the phonetics component. Based on phonetic and phonological data, it can be concluded that a blocking effect ensues between the process of coda deletion and post-vocalic voicing, giving rise to phonetic opacity. Against the assumption that the latter process is phonological in nature, acous-tic data suggest that it is highly gradient, coarticulatory and variable, in which case it is inexplicable why it is blocked by phonological segment deletion. The proposed solution set forth in this paper is that the phonetic component has access to deep structure beyond featural specifications of sounds. What is more, evidence from prosody indicates that structural information concerning prosodic boundaries is also transposed into phonetics and influences production. Thus, the type and amount of information computed at the phonetics-phonology interface needs to be revised and supplemented by turbid structures in order to account for surface variability and both inter- and intra-speaker differences

The relevance of prosodic structure in tonal articulation. Edge effects at the prosodic word level in Catalan and Spanish

We conducted a production experiment with 1600 potentially ambiguous utterances distinguished by word boundary location in Catalan and Spanish (e.g., Cat. mirà batalles ‘(s)he looked at battles’ vs. mirava talles ‘I/(s)he used to look at carvings’; Span. da balazos ‘(s)he fires shots’ vs. daba lazos ‘I/(s)he gave ribbons’; stressed syllables are underlined). Results revealed strong effects of within-word position on H location. Peaks tended to be timed earlier with respect to the end of the syllable when their associated syllables occurred later in the word than when they occurred earlier in the word. These results confirmed previous findings for other languages ( Silverman & Pierrehumbert, 1990 for English; Arvaniti, Ladd, & Mennen, 1998 for Greek; and Ishihara, 2006 for Japanese; and Godjevac, 2000 for Serbo-Croatian) and for Spanish and Catalan (Prieto, van Santen, & Hirschberg, 1995 for Spanish; de la Mota, 2005; Simonet, 2006, Simonet & Torreira, 2005 for Catalan). A set of perception experiments suggested that tonal alignment patterns influence listeners’ judgments of word boundary location both in Catalan and in Spanish. Listeners were able to employ fine allophonic details of H tonal alignment due to within-word position to identify lexical items that are ambiguous for word-boundary position. The data is consistent with the view that prosodic structure plays an essential part in determining the temporal coordination of f0 contours with segmental material.Parts of this study were presented at the ESF International Conference on Tone and Intonation (Santorini, September 2004), the 2nd Phonetics and Phonology in Iberia (Bellaterra, June 2005), the Xth Conference on Laboratory Phonology (Paris, June 2006) and at talks at the Laboratoire Parole et Langage (Aix-en-Provence, April 2005) and Institut de la Communication Parlée (Grenoble, November 2005). We are grateful to the audience at these conferences, and especially to C. de la Mota, G. Elordieta, C. Gussenhoven, J.I. Hualde, D.R. Ladd, H. Lœvenbruck, J. Kingston, C. Petrone, M. Simonet, F. Torreira, P. Welby for very useful feedback. We are grateful to friends and colleagues for their participation in the production and perception experiments. We would like to thank the Associate Editor and the three reviewers (D.R. Ladd, P. Welby, and an anonymous reviewer) for their very thorough reviews which have helped improved the final quality of the paper. Finally, we would like to thank F. Torreira and P. Welby, for their help with the Praat scripts, C. André, M. D’Imperio and C. Petrone for their support with the use of Perceval, and the SEA (Servei d’Estadística de la Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona) for their help with the statistical analysis of the data. This research has been funded by projects FFI2009-07648/FILO and CONSOLIDER-INGENIO 2010 Programme CSD2007-00012 (both awarded by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación) and by project 2009 SGR 701 (awarded by the Generalitat de Catalunya)