Implicaciones semánticas de la entonación declarativa e interrogativa y su importancia en la variación interdialectal

Abstract

Intonation is one of the linguistic means available to each speaker to convey their speech successfully. Its possibilities go beyond what is merely formal, i.e. the movements of the melody or fundamental frequency which allow us to know its functionality on a phonetic level and which are really important in intra and interlinguistic variation. Indeed, for a long time, the different types of information transmitted by this prosodema have been highlighted, although not studied in enough depth, both at the linguistic level (delimitation of units for better understanding of discourse or differentiation between different types of content), and at the sociolinguistic and pragmatic one (origin of the speakers, sociocultural level, communicative intentions, etc.). In this study we are particularly interested in the differentiation of assertive vs. interrogative content between four varieties of Spanish, which are historically linked: Canarian, Cuban, Venezuelan and Texan (from San Antonio). The intonational analysis is carried out taking into account two different perspectives, acoustic and perceptual. The results of the first one allow us to know the prosodic marks which relate and differentiate the interdialectal variation; those of the second one reveal to what extent such marks are recognized as differentiators of the contents considered in the study.