The prosody-pragmatics interface: An acoustic analysis of contrasting Spanish varieties

Abstract

Investigating correlations between communicative contexts and prosodic elements allows researchers to exploit the (perhaps inherent) connection on the prosody-pragmatics interface. Pitch accent models such as ToBi and RaR are helpful for a descriptive analysis, but categorization of different pitch contours can be subjective and rely on the eye of the investigator. Comparing the prosodic elements that define these models' categorization parameters would provide a better approximation of the intonation patterns across specific languages varieties and pragmatic contexts. This study investigates the prosody-pragmatics interface from an acoustic perspective in an analysis of native speakers of several Spanish varieties. Participants responded to 12 situations in which two pragmatic variables were controlled for (social distance, ranking of imposition). Responses were analyzed with a Praat script to capture pitch range, pitch span and speaking rate. Results do reveal a correlation between dialect and each suprasegmental variables, but an even stronger correlation between speaker and the contextual pragmatic variables was found, irrespective of dialect. These findings provide empirical evidence that prosodic elements of the speech signal are more relevant to the given pragmatic context rather than to speaker dialect traits, suggesting intonation patterns are constructed within a communicative context rather than within the speaker's community.