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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. 111–134

Chapter 4
The yes-no question contour in Brazilian Portuguese

A geographical continuum

| University of Lisbon, Faculty of Letters, Center of Linguistics, Portugal
| University of Lisbon, Faculty of Letters, Center of Linguistics, Portugal

The main goal of this paper is to provide a phonological analysis of neutral yes-no questions in Brazilian Portuguese in seven varieties (Paraíba, Sergipe, Bahia, Minas Gerais, Rio de Janeiro, Santa Catarina and Rio Grande do Sul), most of them spoken along the Atlantic Coast. The analysis followed the autosegmental-metrical framework (Ladd, 2008), and the P-ToBI system for intonational labeling (Frota et al., 2015a; Frota, Oliveira, Cruz, & Vigário, 2015c). The distribution of the nuclear contour indicates a geographical continuum, where a rising contour is found in the North and a rising-falling contour in the Center-Southern regions.

Keywords: intonation, yes-no question, autosegmental-metrical analysis, Brazilian Portuguese
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Previous studies on intonational variation in Portuguese
  • 3.The phonological analysis of nuclear contours across languages: The rising-falling contour
  • 4.Methodology
  • 5.Results
    • 5.1The phonological analysis
      • 5.1.1On alignment
      • 5.1.2On text-tune accommodation
    • 5.2The geographical distribution
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgments
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 2 November 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.14.04cas
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