The Intonation of Castilian Spanish Declaratives and Absolute Interrogatives

The Intonation of Castilian Spanish Declaratives and Absolute Interrogatives sets out to provide the most complete description of the intonation patterns of Castilian Spanish declaratives and absolute interrogatives that has been presented to date. Speech production data is compiled and examined to determine the physical characteristics of the intonation patterns of these sentence types in both broad focus and in narrow focus contexts, allowing for as complete an understanding of the intonation patterns presented by declaratives and absolute interrogatives as is currently possible. Speech perception data is also presented in order to address the differences between the intonation patterns of declaratives and absolute interrogatives from the perspective of the listener, showing the degree to which each of these differences is meaningful in communication. While the primary goal of the book is to present a solid description of the intonation patterns, the implications of the data for any potential phonological analysis of the intonation patterns are also considered. Timothy L. Face is Associate Professor of Hispanic Linguistics at the University of Minnesota. He is author of Intonational Marking of Contrastive Focus in Madrid Spanish (Lincom Europa, 2002) and Guide to the Phonetic Symbols of Spanish (2008), as well as editor of Laboratory Approaches to Spanish Phonology (2004) and the journal Studies in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics.