Tonal alignment patterns in Spanish

Abstract

Two speakers of Mexican Spanish read a total of 810 declarative sentences containing nine distinct target syllables with an H *accent, under different prosodic conditions (end of intonational phrase, end of intermediate phrase, and phrase-medial position), systematically changing syllabic position in the word and distance in syllables to the next stressed syllable. The data demonstrate that models that represent F 0peak placement as a fixed proportion of the syllable/rhyme are superseded by models that take into account intrasyllabic segmental durations (e.g., van Santen & Hirschberg 1994). In addition, prosodic factors such as adjacency to word, intonational and intermediate-boundaries, and stress clash, are key components in the prediction of peak location. F 0peaks before such prosodic units tend to be placed earlier in thier syllables. Long range effects of those prosodic factors are statistically significant, but generally small. An examination of the timing of the entire accent gesture in these prosodic contexts demonstrates that: 1) the location of the start of the F 0rise is fairly constant (generally at the onset of the accented syllable); 2) the time allocated for the rising gesture is not invariant: syllables with early peaks also have a shorter rise time(i.e., temporal distance between the peak and the previous valley); and 3) the velocity of the accent rise is clearly correlated with peak delay(i.e., temporal distance between the peak and the onset of the syllable): accents with relatively early peaks have a steeper rising slope, and vice versa. Results from the present study represent preliminary evidence that both the segmental composition of the accented syllable and following prosodic context trigger a timing and velocity adjustment on the entire H *accent gesture in Spanish.