Prosody and sentence disambiguation in European Portuguese

Our investigation focuses on several types of structural ambiguity in European Portuguese. The materials include sentences with set-divider adverbs ambiguous as to the direction of syntactic attachment, adjunct and complement PPs ambiguous as to the level of syntactic embedding, nonrestrictive clauses with local and non-local possible antecedents, and relative clauses ambiguous as to their restrictive/non-restrictive meaning. Besides providing a prosodic description of sentences with these various sorts of ambiguity, the relation between prosody and syntactic structure is addressed. It is concluded that structural ambiguity is not always cued by prosody, and it may be resolved by prosodic means that are optional. Additionally, some options on sentence partition in intonational phrases are only available under some interpretations, and in specific configurations I-breaks may not be inserted (namely, between a head and an adjacent complement or modifier). In all cases studied intonational phrase level properties play a crucial role in sentence disambiguation. An intonational phrase boundary after set-divider adverbs indicates leftattachment and between a constituent and the preceding material implies non-local attachment. These facts are seen to follow in a principled way from the conditions on the formation of intonational phrases

Pronominal cliticization in European Portuguese : a postlexical operation

Pronominal clitics in the Romance languages are known to display affix-like behaviour. This fact has led to proposals, such as Zwicky (1987) and Halpern (1995) for European Portuguese (EP), that pronominal clitics behave like lexical affixes because they are (inflectional) affixes. In this paper we argue against such an analysis of EP pronominal clitics. First, we present a bulk of phenomena -including distributional facts, the (non-)application of phonological rules, and the (non)application of morphophonological rules- that clearly differentiate EP pronominal clitics from inflectional affixes, and argue for the postlexical combination of verbs and clitics. We then survey the arguments put forward in favour of the lexical attachment of pronominal clitics in EP, and show that these are not compelling arguments for the lexical hypothesis. We conclude that pronominal cliticization must be treated as a postlexical operation in EP.Els clítics pronominals en les llengües romàniques tenen un comportament semblant als afixos. Aquest fet ha inspirat propostes, com la de Zwicky (1987) i Halpern (1995) per al portuguès europeu (EP), que defensen que els clítics pronominals es comporten com afixos lèxics perquè són afixos (inflectius). En aquest article discutim una anàlisi com aquesta dels clítics pronominals de l'EP. En primer lloc, presentem un conjunt de fenòmens -que inclouen distribució, la (no-)aplicació de les regles fonològiques, i la (no-)aplicació de les regles morfofonològiques- que diferencien clarament els clítics pronominals del PE dels afixos inflectius, i defensem la combinació postlèxica de verbs i clítics. Després mostrem els arguments a favor de l'adjunció lèxica dels clítics pronominals en PE, i demostrem que no són arguments suficients per a la hipòtesi lèxica. Concloem que la cliticització pronominal s'ha de tractar com una operació postlèxica en PE

Pistas duracionais e entoacionais na marcação de sintagmas entoacionais (I) no PE: a prosódia no efeito Garden-Path

This research examines the prosodic realization, in European Portuguese, of the sentences with temporary structural ambiguities, known in the psycholinguistic literature as Garden-Path sentences. In a perceptual task, we analyzed the influence of prosodic marking in the interpretation of such ambiguous sentences. With respect to prosodic analysis, we investigate, in particular, the structuring of sentences into prosodic constituents, intonational marking, and the effects of duration with respect to the final lengthening in the position of the final boundary I intermediate and initial strengthening in the left edge of the I final.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Palavras complexas na aquisição da morfologia do Português: estudo de caso

We investigate morphological development in the first productions of a child (L). Until de age 2, the large majority of L’s productive vocabulary is composed of simple (non-)inflected words, belonging to the Noun category (Verbs are much less frequent; Adverbs and words belonging to closed classes are residual). The consistent production of complex words appears at around 2;03, coinciding with a moment of lexical explosion. At about the same time Adjectives appear and Verbs and closed class words become increasingly frequent. Novel words coined by L (e.g., mimpazinha ‘limpinha’) appear roughly in the same period, showing that the child is already analysing words and applying morphological rules when the first complex words are consistently produced.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Prosodic structure and prominence constraints on epenthesis: evidence from hiatus resolution across Portuguese varieties

Languages tend to avoid hiatus and different means may be used to achieve this end, including the deletion or semivocalization of one of the vowels (Casali 1997, Frota 2000, Cabré & Prieto 2005). These processes usually apply within particular prosodic domains, and are often blocked under stress clash configurations (Nespor & Vogel 1989, Frota 2000, Cabré & Prieto 2005). Another way of breaking hiatus is through epenthesis, a common process usually motivated by phonotactic requirements or metrical structure (e.g. word minimal size, rhythmic alternation of stressed and unstressed vowels – Hall 2011, 2013). In this talk we focus on a particular case of epenthesis that is active in non-Standard, Northern and Central varieties of European Portuguese, which consists of the insertion of [j] to break a hiatus formed by central mid or low vowels (a-a), when V2 bears word stress (e.g. a aula [ɐjˈawlɐ]). Besides playing a role in the definition of the context of epenthesis, we show that prosodic and prominence conditions further constrain the phenomenon in non-trivial ways. Although [j]-insertion has long been reported in the literature (Vasconcelos 1895, Cintra 1971, Segura 2013), important details on the phenomenon are largely ignored, which we address here: (i) its prosodic domain of occurrence; (ii) possible effects of higher levels of prominence and of the prosodic status of the unit V1 belongs to (prosodic word – PW, or clitic – CL); (iii) its geographic area; (iv) external factors that may affect its occurrence (e.g. type of speech, age). Speech data were recorded from three districts in the North (Oporto, Braga, Viana do Castelo) and one in the Centre of Portugal (Portalegre). The preliminary data reported below, from 20 subjects, include 3 urban and 3 rural data points. Collected speech comes from three sources: (i) a sub-corpus of a reading task (27 sentences, produced twice by each participant), and (ii) semi-spontaneous tasks (a Map Task and an Interview). In the read speech corpus, prosodic constituency and prominence are controlled for: the hiatus sequence occurs inside or across prosodic words (PW), prosodic word groups (PWG), phonological phrases (PhP) and intonation phrases (IP); and V2 appears as the head/non-head of each domain inside IP. Speakers are evenly distributed in two age groups (20-45 years-old and above 59 years-old). Results from the three tasks show that all of the regions exhibit some amount of insertion, but the frequency and contexts of glide occurrence vary. Globally, there is more insertion when V1 belongs to a CL than to a PW (28% vs 12%, respectively), but some areas almost never show insertion when V1 belongs to a PW (i.e., Portalegre). In the latter cases, the prosodic phenomenon seems to be restricted to maximally local prosodic contexts. Results from the read speech corpus show that, when V1 is part of a PW: (i) only in one region (Viana do Castelo) glide insertion optionally applies across PhP; in most areas, glide insertion optionally applies inside and across PWG; IP boundaries, by contrast, always block insertion; (ii) to the exception of the rural point in Oporto region, higher levels of prominence matter across regions, since there is preference for insertion when V2 is the head of PhP or of PWG (21%), in contrast with non-head contexts (5%). Although older subjects tend to insert more, across age groups there is also a clear effect of type of speech, as semi-spontaneous data favours glide insertion (53% vs 17% in the reading task). This suggests that rather than simply a pattern of change, we may be in face of dialectal struggle within bidialectal communities, especially evidenced in more formal speech: prosodic and prominence constraints favour epenthesis, while external constraints (i.e. Standard prestige) press towards inhibition of glide insertion. Overall, this research contributes to determining language internal and external factors (and their respective weights) in glide epenthesis (along the lines of Coetzee 2009, 2012), and, more in general, to deepen our understanding of the mechanisms involved in phonological variation and change

Aquisição da prosódia I: Uma categorização das produções sonoras de e para a criança

Este estudo aborda um conjunto de aspectos da aquisição da prosódia. A escassez de trabalhos sobre aquisição do Português, corresponde a (quase) inexistência de trabalhos sobre aquisição da prosódia nesta língua. Assim, este estudo contribui para o avanço do conhecimento tanto na área da aquisição, como na área da prosódia. Observamos um corpus constituído por 304 unidades, correspondendo a produções sonoras de uma criança e respectiva mãe, recolhidas entre os 8 dias e os 24 meses da criança. Estas unidades foram sujeitas a uma análise perceptiva e acústica, com o objectivo de verificar as seguintes hipóteses: (1) 6 possível estabelecer uma tipologia das produções vocais da criança, definida a partir de parâmetros acústicos (frequência fundamental e tempo); (2) É possível estabelecer dois tipos de categorização perceptiva das produções da criança e da mãe: uma de natureza de$,- critiva (apreensão dos contornos entoacionais); outra de natureza formaVfuncional (apreensão dos «tipos o e das «funções» frásicas). A análise efectuada conduziu-nos a confirmaçbo das hipóteses colocadas e permitiu-nos salientar aspectos como: (I) o momento da emergência das produções linguísticas; (11) a importância da prosódia para se conferir estatuto linguístico as produçõw sonoras; (111) a unidade/simplicidade prosódica caracterizadora do discurso da criança versusa complexidade/diversidade caracterizadora do discurso materno. ------ ABSTRACT ------ This article focuses on a few aspects of the acquisition of prosody, a subject that is almost unstudied as far as the portuguese language is concerned. The authors have observed a corpus of 304 sound sequences produced by a child and his mother during the child’s first two years of life. These units have been analised perceptually and acoustically so that the following hypotheses could be tested (1) It is possible to establish categories of the child’s vocal productions defined by means of acoustic parameters (such as the fundamental frequency and fempo); (2) It is possible to categorize perceptually the sequences of discourse produced by the child and the mother into different sets of categories: a descriptive one related to the sound impression of the intonational contour and a formaVfunctiona1 one related to sentence type and function. The hypotheses put forward have been confirmed and several aspects of the acquisition of prosody have been highiighted, i.e. (I) the appearance of the child’s first linguistic productions, (11) the important role of prosody in the recognition of the iinguistic nature of the child’s productions, (111) the prosodic unity/ /simpiicity of the child’s discourse vem the prosodic diversity/complexity of the mother’s discourse

A atribuição de acentos tonais em compostos no Português do Brasil

We investigate tonal association within branching prosodic word groups (PWG) (e.g. macro-endividamento), that is constituents that dominate more than one prosodic word (PW) but display a phonology distinct from phonological phrases (Vigário, 2009; to appear). Inspecting the F0 contours of 180 recorded sentences with branching and non-branching PWGs in various positions and with varying size, we conclude that the internal members of branching PWGs behave differently from PWs within non-branching PWGs: they are assigned significantly less pitch accents, and, contrary to what happens with non-branching PWGs (e.g. julgava), pitch assignment is dependent on the length of PWG internal PWs.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

The phonetics and phonology of intonational phrasing in Romance

Previous work on intonational phrasing in Romance has addressed the role of syntactic and prosodic structure on the placement of boundaries within SVO utterances (Elordieta et al. 2003, D'Imperio et al. to appear). A comparable database of 744 utterances was created for the 5 languages and varieties under study: Catalan (Cat), European Portuguese (both the Standard variety and the Northern variety spoken in Braga, SEP and NEP respectively), Italian (Neapolitan variety), and Spanish. The patterns of phrasing found were described and discussed, but a detailed inspection of the nature of the boundary cues was left undone. The present paper investigates the phonetics and phonology of the perceived phrasing boundaries established in previous work. We have three related goals: 1) to provide a typology of the boundary cues used by each language and determine their relative frequency; 2) to describe the phonetics of the dominant phonological choices to mark phrasing boundaries; 3) to better understand the extent to which Romance languages differ in their phonological boundary markers and/or in the phonetic instantiation of similar phonological choices.All the utterances previously classified as with and without a clear phrasing boundary were extracted from the compared Romance languages database. The utterances were perceptually and acoustically analysed. Resorting to spectrograms and F0 contours, a number of F0 and duration measurements were taken for each token. The results reported below are based on a random sample of 405 utterances. As shown in Table 1, prosodic breaks in Romance are usually marked by a High boundary tone. The preboundary stretch tends to be realised as a rise on the last stressed syllable, which extends to the boundary syllable (continuation rise) or forms a high plateau up to the boundary (sustained pitch). Italian deviates from the other languages due to its dominant use of sustained pitch. Other cues, such as pitch reset and preboundary lengthening are used by all languages but with different rates. In our database, the possibility of a Low boundary tone (in the EP case with a drop to the utterance base level) joins SEP, NEP and It against Cat and Sp. The phonetics of the H boundary tone points to the same language grouping, as shown by the scaling ratios in Table 2. However, It patterns with Cat and Sp with respect to pitch reset. Note that the height of the boundary tone is more extreme in the languages that make more use of it, in the same way that reset values are higher in the languages that more frequently resort to this boundary marker.Romance languages mainly signal phrasing boundaries with rises. Nevertheless, our data shows that not only the phonology (choice of pitch accent, boundary tone, phrasing level), but also the specific phonetics (scaling of boundary tone, scaling of pre- and post-boundary peaks) of the boundary gesture may differ, even among closely related languages