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Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 14: Selected papers from the 46th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL), Stony Brook, NY
Edited by Lori Repetti and Francisco Ordóñez
[Romance Languages and Linguistic Theory 14] 2018
► pp. 85–102

Chapter 6
Dime una cosa: Are wh-in-situ questions different in Spanish?

Evidence from intonation

 | Florida State University
 | Florida State University
This project provides a preliminary examination of the intonational characteristics of information-seeking, echo-repetition and echo-surprise wh-in-situ questions in Spanish. The analysis of 120 questions from 4 female participants from Northern Peninsular Spanish shows that information-seeking questions have a relatively reduced tonal range, and they are the most likely to have final rising contours. On the other hand, echo-repetition and echo-surprise questions differ mostly in that the former have lower local tonal ranges than the latter. These findings provide support for previous syntactic analyses that argue for differences between information-seeking and echo-questions on one side, and echo-repetition and echo-surprise questions on the other.
Keywords: Peninsular Spanish, wh-in-situ, information-seeking questions, echo questions, intonation, marked stress, tonal range, final contours, duration
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Wh-in-situ in Spanish: Pragmatics, syntax and intonation
    • 2.1Pragmatic readings
    • 2.2Syntactic analyses
    • 2.3Intonational properties
  • 3.Experimental design
    • 3.1Participants
    • 3.2Tasks and data collection
    • 3.3Data analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Final contours
    • 4.2Tonal range
    • 4.3Duration
  • 5.Discussion and conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 13 August 2018
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/rllt.14.06gon
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2021. The prosody of Frenchwh-in-situ questions: Echo vs. non-echo. Journal of Linguistics 57:3 ► pp. 569 ff. DOI logo
González, Carolina & Lara Reglero
2020. The licensing of wh-in-situ questions. In Hispanic Linguistics [Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics, 26], ► pp. 53 ff. DOI logo
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