Chapter published in:
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: 02 November 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.14.04cas
References
Arvaniti, A., & Baltazani, M.
(2005) Intonational analysis and prosodic annotation of Greek. In S. Jun (Ed.), Prosodic typology – The phonology of intonation and phrasing (pp. 362–389). Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Atterer, M., & Ladd, D. R.
(2004) On the phonetics and phonology of ‘‘segmental anchoring’’ of F0: Evidence from German. Journal of Phonetics, 32, 177–197. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Barbies, S.
(2009) Locus and limits of syntactic microvariation. Língua, 119, 1607–1623..Google Scholar
Boersma, P., & Weenink, D.
(2010) Praat – Doing Phonetics by Computer. (Version 5.1.31). Retrieved from http://​www​.fon​.hum​.uva​.nl​/praat​/download​_win​.html
Britain, D.
(2007) Space and spatial diffusion. In J. K. Chambers, P. Trudgill, & N. Schilling-Estes (Eds.), The handbook of language variation and change (pp. 603–637). Oxford: Blackwell. Retrieved from http://​www​.blackwellreference​.com​/subscriber​/tocnode​?id​=g9781405116923​_chunk​_g978140511692333
Bruce, G.
(2005) Intonational prominence in varieties of Swedish revisited. In S. Jun (Ed.), Prosodic typology – The phonology of intonation and phrasing (pp. 410–429). Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Bruce, G., & Garding, E.
(1978) A prosodic typology for Swedish dialects. In E. Garding, G. Bruce & R. Bannert (Eds.), Nordic prosody (pp. 219–228). Lund: Lund University, Departament of Linguistics.Google Scholar
Cardoso, S.
(1986) Tinha Nascentes razão? In C. Scheinowitz & S. Cardoso (Eds.), Estudos Linguísticos e Literários, 5, 47–59.Google Scholar
(1999) A dialectologia no Brasil: Perspectivas. DELTA, 15, 233–255. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Castelo, J.
(2016) A entoação dos enunciados declarativos e interrogativos no Português do Brasil: Uma análise fonológica em variedades ao longo da Costa Atlântica. (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). University of Lisbon.Google Scholar
Cruz, M., Crespo-Sendra, V., Castelo, J. & Frota, S.
Submitted. Asking questions across Portuguese varieties: Asking questions across European and Brazilian Portuguese varieties: information-seeking and counterexpectational yes-no questions. InM. Cruz, P. Oliveira & S. Frota eds. Prosodic Variation (with)in languages: Intonation, phrasing and segments Studies in Phonetics and Phonology, editado por M. J. Ball & P. van Lieshout London Equinox Publishing Ltd.
Crespo-Sendra, V., Cruz, M., Silva, J., & Frota, S.
(2014) Asking questions across Portuguese varieties. Talk presented at the 6th International conference on tone and intonation in Europe (TIE). University of Utrecht, Netherlands.
Cunha, C., Silva J., & Silvestre, A.
(2014) Atlas Linguístico do Brasil – Map F07 P2 – Intonation of yes-no question utterances. Londrina: EDUEL.Google Scholar
Cunha, C., & Silva, J.
(2015) Variação entoacional nos enunciados interrogativos. In J. Abraçado & M. Martins (Eds.). Mapeamento sociolinguístico do Português Brasileiro (pp. 79–108). São Paulo: Contexto.Google Scholar
Frota, S.
(2002) Nuclear falls and rises in European Portuguese: A phonological analysis of declarative and question intonation. Probus, 14, 113–146. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2014) The intonational phonology of European Portuguese. In S. Jun (Ed.), Prosodic typology II (pp. 6–42). Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
(2016) Surface and structure: Transcribing intonation within and across languages. Laboratory Phonology: Journal of the Association for Laboratory Phonology, 7(1). DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frota, S., Butler, J., & Vigário, M.
(2014) Infantsʹ perception of intonation: Is it a statement or a question? Infancy, 19(2), 194–213. DOI logo.Google Scholar
Frota, S., & Prieto, P.
(2015) Intonation in Romance: Systemic similarities and differences. In S. Frota & P. Prieto (Eds.), Intonation in Romance (pp. 392–418). Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frota, S., Cruz, M., Fernandes-Svartman, F., Collischonn, G., Fonseca, A., Serra, C., …, & Vigário, M.
(2015a) Intonational variation in Portuguese: European and Brazilian varieties. In S. Frota & P. Prieto (Eds.), Intonation in Romance (pp. 235–283). Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frota, S., Castelo, J., Cruz, M., Barros, N., Crespo-Sendra, V., Silvestre, A., & Vigário, M.
(2015b) Melodia ou texto? Estratégias de acomodação entre melodia e texto no Português. Diadorim, 17, 12–33. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Frota, S., Oliveira, P., Cruz, M., & Vigário, M.
(2015c) P-ToBI: tools for the transcription of Portuguese prosody. Lisboa: Laboratório de Fonética, Centro de Linguística da Universidade de Lisboa, Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa. Retrieved from http://​labfon​.letras​.ulisboa​.pt​/InAPoP​/P​-ToBI/
Frota, S., & Moraes, J.
(2016) Intonation of European and Brazilian Portuguese. In W. L. Wetzels, S. Menuzzi, & J. Costa (Eds.), The handbook of Portuguese linguistics (pp. 141–166). Malden, MA: John Wiley. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grabe, E.
(1998) Comparative intonational phonology: English and German (MPI Series 7). Wageningen: Ponsenet Looien.Google Scholar
(2004) Intonational variation in urban dialects of English spoken in the British Isles. In G. Peter & J. Peters (Eds.), Regional variation in intonation (pp. 9–32). Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Grice, M.
(1995) The intonation of interrogation in Palermo Italian: Implications for intonation theory. Tubingen: Niemeyer. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grice, M., Ladd, D. R., & Arvaniti, A.
(2000) On the place of phrase accent in intonation phonology. Phonology 17, 143–185 DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Grice, M., Dʹ Império, M., Savino, M., & Avesani, C.
(2005) Strategies for intonation labelling across varieties of Italian. In S. Jun (Ed.), Prosodic typology – The phonology of intonation and phrasing (pp. 362–389). Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Huff, D. L.
(1963) A probabilistic analysis of consumer spatial behaviour. In W. S. Decker (Ed.), Emerging concepts in marketing (pp. 443–461). Chicago, IL: American Marketing Association.Google Scholar
Ilari, R., & Basso, R.
(2006) O português da gente. São Paulo: Contexto.Google Scholar
Jun, S.
(Ed.) (2005) Prosodic typology II. Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Ladd, D. R.
(2008) Intonational phonology, (2nd ed.). Cambridge: CUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Moraes, J.
(2008) The pitch accents in Brazilian Portuguese: Analysis by synthesis. In P. Barbosa, S. Madureira, & C. Reis, Proceedings of the fourth conference on Speech Prosody 2008 (pp. 389–397). Campinas: Unicamp.Google Scholar
Nascentes, A.
(1953) O linguajar carioca. Rio de Janeiro: Organização Simões.Google Scholar
Nunes, V.
(2011) Análises entonacionais de sentenças declarativas e interrogativas totais nos falares florianopolitano e lageano. (Unpublished master’s dissertation). Centro de Comunicação e Expressão, UFSC, Florianópolis.
Prieto, P., Borràs-Comes, J., Cabré, T., Crespo-Sendra, V., Mascaró, I., Roseano, P., Sichel-Bazin, R., & Vanrell, M.
(2015) Intonational phonology of Catalan and its dialectal varieties. In S. Frota & P. Prieto (Eds.), Intonational variation in Romance (pp. 9–62). Oxford: OUP. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Rossi, N., Ferreira, C. S., & Isensee, D.
(1967) A dialectologia. ALFA, 11, 89–116.Google Scholar
Savino, M.
(2012) The intonation of polar questions in Italian: Where is the rise? Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 42, 23–48. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Silva, J.
(2011) Caracterização prosódica dos falares brasileiros: As orações interrogativas totais. (Unpublished master’s thesis). Faculdade de Letras, Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro, Rio de Janeiro. Retrieved from http://​www​.letras​.ufrj​.br​/posverna​/mestrado​/SilvaJCB​.pdf
Tobler, W.
(1970) A computer movie simulating urban growth in the Detroit region. Economic Geography, 46, 234–240. DOI logoGoogle Scholar
Vigário, M., & Frota, S.
(2003) The intonation of standard and Northern European Portuguese: A comparative intonational phonology approach. Journal of Portuguese Linguistics, (2)2, 115–137. DOI logoGoogle Scholar