Most studies on Catalan intonation (Bonet 1984, Recasens 1993, Badia i Margarit 1994, Prieto 1995, to appear b, c) agree in that the neutral or unmarked intonation of declarative sentences involves two aspects: 1) a final fall in pitch which starts after the penultimate accented syllable and progressively descends till the end of the contour, and 2) a rise during the first accented syllable. This is illustrated in (1.30) reproducing an example from Prieto (to appear b). The stressed syllables are underlined.
(1.30)
Viuran a Vilamalla “They will live in Vilamalla”
According to Prieto, the contour starts at a mid pitch level which is maintained during the prestressed syllable(s). Then, a rise starts on the first accented syllable and expands over the next poststressed syllable. After that, there is a progressive lowering in pitch, which undergoes its major fall over the last accented syllable. When the sentence consists of only one accented syllable, then the rising-falling movement is compressed within this syllable. An example, also provided in Prieto (to appear b), is reproduced below.
(
1.
31)
No
Finally, when the utterance has more than two stressed syllables, the accent distribution is variable. There can be as many accents as stressed syllables, but the final number of accents is a matter of choice on the speaker’s part. All non-final
The works by Salcioli and Mascaro are not reviewed here. Salcioli’s work mainly deals with the intonation of interrogations and Mascaro studies other Catalan dialects rather than Central Catalan.
accented syllables show a rise, followed by the fall on the last accented syllable. Two examples from Prieto are presented in (1.32) below. In the two pitch contours there are four accents. The main difference lies in the distribution of the accents. In (1.32a) there is no accent in ahir, whereas in (1.32b) arribar does not have an accent.
(1.32) a.
La meva cosina va a r r i ^ ahir a la nit “My cousin arrived yesterday night”
b.
La meva corina va arribar ahir a la nit
Sometimes declarative sentences are produced with more than one tone unit. This might be due to: 1) differences in style (reading speech vs casual speech), 2) the length of the constituents (long constituents tend to be followed by a prosodic boundary) and 3) the necessity to disambiguate semantically ambiguous sentences. These aspects are discussed in more detail by Prieto (to appear c). (1.33) presents a sentence with a prosodic boundary after a long subject (example from Prieto to appear b) and (1.34) shows two segmentally equivalent sentences, which acquire different meanings depending on the location of the prosodic boundary (example from Bonet
1984).
(1.33)
La meva cosina de Girona / amba demà “My cousin from Girona / comes tomorrow”
(1.34) a.
Unajove / veu I’amenaca “A young girl / sees the threat”
b.
Unajove veu / l’amenaça “A young voice / threatens him”
Prieto (1997, to appear b) describes the intonation of sentences with more than one tone unit as follows. The second tone unit behaves as if it was an isolated prosodic phrase with declarative intonation. The first tone unit, on the other hand, shows a significant change in pitch at the end of the phrase. This change in pitch can be characterised by a continuous rising pitch, as in the examples above, or can show a falling-rising movement.
Following the AM approach, Prieto (1995) interpreted the pitch contours with a declarative intonation as follows. When a sentence consists of only one accented syllable, as in (1.31), this is associated to an H* pitch accent followed by L-L% edge tones. When the pitch contour has more than one accented syllable, as in (1.30) and in (1.32), the last accent is transcribed as L* and all prenuclear accents as H*. As before, the end of the intonation phrase is marked L-L%. The tonal transcriptions for the sentences in (1.30-1.32) are illustrated in (1.35) below.
(1.35) a. ^
H* L-L%
b. Viuran a Vilamalla
H* L* L-L%
c. La meva cosina va arribar ahir a la nit
H* H* (H*) (H*) L*L-L%
As far as the transcription of the sentences produced with two tone units is concerned, Prieto (1997) proposes an intermediate phrase boundary (marked with an H- phrase accent) after the first tone unit. Thus, her interpretation of (1.33) and (1.34) would be as in (1.36) and (1.37) respectively. In none of her papers does she propose a notation for the falling-rising contour at the end of the first tone unit.
(1.36) La meva cosina de Girona / arriba demà
H* H* H* H- H* L*L-L%
(1.37) a. Unajove / veu l’amenaça
H* H- (H*) L* L-L%
b. Unajove veu / l’amenaça
H* H* H- L* L-L%
Prieto’s phonological interpretation of the declarative FO traces differs in some ways from Bonet (1984). Bonet’s interpretation is mainly based on her own perceptual judgements. Bonet’s proposal is briefly presented below since her analysis will be relevant for the interpretation of our data. Bonet describes the intonation of accented syllables but not the pitch movement at the edges of the contour.
Bonet claims that the intonation of Central Catalan declaratives could be accounted for by means of three principles, which are related to the number of prosodic constituents (or tone units) within a sentence:
1. all accented syllables in the last prosodic constituent are low; 2. the last accented syllable of a prosodic constituent is low;
3. accented syllables (not in the last constituent and not the last syllable of its own constituent) are high.
According to these rules, sentences produced with a tone unit (examples (1.30)- (1.32)) have a low tone on every accented syllable. On the other hand, sentences with two tone units, such as (1.33) and (1.34), will present the following patterns:
(1.38) La meva cosina de Girona / arriba demà
H H L L L
(1.39) a. Unajove / veu I’amenaca
b. Unajove veu / l’amenaça
H L L
Two basic differences can be observed between Bonet’s and Prieto’s tonal descriptions. First, whereas Prieto characterises the last pitch accent of the first tone unit as H* (followed by H-), Bonet assumes that this pitch accent is low. Second, whereas in Prieto’s analysis all prenuclear accents are H*, in Bonet’s analysis can be either L or H depending on whether they appear on the final prosodic constituent or not. This different interpretation raises the issue of which is the best way (perceptual or acoustic) to decide the tonal categories. Bonet treats some of the prenuclear syllables as low since she perceives them with a low pitch in comparison to the surrounding syllables. This contrasts with the acoustic analysis of Prieto who, by observing the phonetic details in the pitch contours, analyses the same pitch accents as high. In the third chapter of this dissertation, this issue will be revisited and both perceptual and acoustic evidence will be provided to elucidate this problem of interpretation.