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Sound, Syntax and Contact in the Languages of Asturias
Edited by Guillermo Lorenzo
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 36] 2022
► pp. 173–194

Chapter 9
Intonational form and speaker belief in Mieres Asturian polar questions

| University of Massachusetts Amherst

Speakers can use distinct intonation contours in polar questions to convey information about ‘degree of commitment.’ The present study analyzes the intonational variation in Mieres Asturian polar questions and explores whether speakers encode information about their belief states intonationally. A production experiment was designed to elicit polar questions, and the results uncovered three main intonational patterns, namely H+L* L%, H* L%, and L* L%. The data show that, while H+L* L% is used as a canonical or ‘default’ PQ-marking tune and does not encode any information about speaker belief states, H* L% and L* L% are epistemically specified, expressing a positive epistemic bias towards the proposition, and a state of disbelief on the part of the speaker, respectively.

Keywords: Asturian, intonation, intonational meaning, polar questions, epistemic meaning
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1The intonation of Asturian
  • 2.Methods
    • 2.1Aims of this study
    • 2.2Participants
    • 2.3Materials
      • 2.3.1Pragmatic contexts
    • 2.4Procedure
    • 2.5Intonational analysis
  • 3.Results
    • 3.1Description of the intonation contours
      • 3.1.1H+L* L%
      • 3.1.2H* L%
      • 3.1.3L* L%
    • 3.2DCT results
  • 4.Discussion
  • 5.Conclusion
  • References
Published online: 1 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.36.09gar
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