Declarativas e interrogativas en Tortosa y Lleida. Comparación de su entonación

Abstract

Altough being both western Catalan subdialects, intonations recorded in Tortosa and Lleida are very different. In phrases with no expansions neither in the subject nor in the object and having just two prenuclear pitch accents, differences were found mainly in absolute interrogatives headed by “que”. This is due to the lack of a second "peak" clearly noticeable in “lleidatà” but missing in “tortosi” (Martinez Celdrán et alii, 2005). This study aims at trying to verify whether in longer phrases, with expansion in the subject or in the object having therefore more pitch accents, the phenomenon remains the same, or maybe differences increase or diminish. The results confirm that when uttering declarative and interrogative phrases without “que”, Lleida's speakers show a clear tendency to stress all pitch accents in the phrase, whereas Tortosa speakers are prone to unstress one of them, usually the one belonging to the nucleus of the component having an expansion. In interrogative phrases with “que”, two distinct pitch ranges can be clearly identified when analyzing Lleida`s speakers, which does not happen when analyzing Tortosa`s speakers. This research belongs to the European project AMPER (Atlas Multimedia de Prosodia del Espacio Románico).