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Studies on Variation in Portuguese
Edited by Pilar P. Barbosa, Maria da Conceição de Paiva and Celeste Rodrigues
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 14] 2017
► pp. 81–110

Chapter 3
Building a prosodic profile of European Portuguese varieties

The challenge of mapping intonation and rhythm

 | University of Lisbon, Portugal
 | University of Lisbon, Portugal
 | University of Lisbon, Portugal
 | University of Lisbon, Portugal
 | University of Lisbon, Portugal
In the present paper we explore a methodology to map prosodic variation in Portuguese, namely intonation and rhythm, which goes beyond the traditional approaches used to represent segmental, lexical or syntactic variation. To find the most adequate mapping method for intonation and rhythm, we tested spatial interaction models for the representation of nuclear contours, and spatial interpolation methods for rhythmic distinctions across varieties. Our results show a non-contiguous distribution of prosodic features, thus not matching the regional areas previously defined on the basis of segmental, lexical or syntactic variation. These results, together with those of previous studies across varieties of other languages, provide growing evidence that the distribution of prosodic features tends to be independent of geography, unlike non-prosodic variation.
Keywords: prosodic variation, intonation, rhythm, probabilistic geographical mapping, European Portuguese
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The challenge of mapping
    • 2.1Mapping linguistic variation
    • 2.2Models of spatial interaction and interpolation: an innovative proposal to map variation
  • 3.Mapping linguistic variation in European Portuguese
  • 4.Materials
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1Intonation
    • 5.2Rhythm
  • 6.Building a prosodic profile of European Portuguese varieties
  • Acknowledgements
  • References
Published online: 2 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.14.03cru
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