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The Conversation Frame: Forms and functions of fictive interaction
Edited by Esther Pascual and Sergeiy Sandler
[Human Cognitive Processing 55] 2016
► pp. 215–234

Intonation of fictive vs. actual direct speech in a Brazilian Portuguese corpus

| Federal University of Juiz de Fora, Brazil
| Federal University of São Carlos, Brazil

We deal with prosodic features in constituents structured by the conversation frame, that is, involving fictive interaction (Pascual 2002, 2014). We investigate how prosodic aspects contribute to the recognition of a fictive reading as a non-genuine instance of direct speech in a Brazilian Portuguese spontaneous speech corpus. The construction in question is “(eu) falei + clause” (‘I said’ + clause), which can be interpreted either fictively or factively (Rocha 2006, 2013, 2014). We used PRAAT to analyze recorded examples of this construction. Our results show that instances with a factive reading have greater fundamental frequency (F0) mean, standard deviation, and range than fictive ones. Factive contours are shifted towards higher values by roughly 2 semitones compared to the fictive ones.

Keywords: fictive vs. factive reading, PRAAT, prosody, spontaneous speech
Published online: 1 November 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/hcp.55.11roc
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