Yes-no questions and echo questions intonation in Majorcan and Minorcan Catalan

1. Yes-no questions and echo questions intonation in Majorcan and Minorcan Catalan Marta Payà (UB) & Maria del Mar Vanrell (UAB)Phonetics and Phonology in Iberia (PaPI) paya@lincat.ub.es · MariaDelMar.Vanrell@campus.uab.es Barcelona, 20-21 June 2005 • Methodology • MATERIAL - Each of the two participants had a map which the other participant couldn’t • see. • - One of the two maps (Instruction Giver’s map) had a route that the other participant had to reproduce asking for it (Instruction Follower’s map). • - Landmarks names were selected so that they had voiced segments and penultimate or antepenultimate stress. • - The two participants didn’t have exactly the same landmarks. There were some discrepancies in the location of the landmarks, the landmarks colour, the landmarks name... • - This elicitation method allows: a) to get a wide range of questions in controlled and, at the same time, natural conditions; b) a good interaction among the participants; c) to display dialectal features due to the spontaneous speech. • PARTICIPANTS - Ten female participants for each variety (Minorcan and Majorcan), aged from 20 to 30 with High School degree or Bachelor’s degree. • Introduction • Interrogative sentences in Catalan have a great functional and dialectal complexity. • Up to now, the research done in this field is minimum, and specially centered in Central Catalan. In 2001 the first works on dialectal comparison are found (Prieto 2001, Carrera et al. 2001, Fernández et al. 2001, Pradilla & Prieto 2002), but in them the pragmatic or semantic roles - function, communicative intention, context- are not kept in mind (or only partially). • Among interrogative sentences, Grice and Savino (2003) distinguish between questions that ask for new information and the ones that ask for given information. We assume this perspective because we consider that it helps us to explain an important part of the variety that is produced inside the same dialectal variety. • We try to describe the intonation of interrogatives basing on the typology described by Payrató (2002): on the one hand, partial interrogatives and yes-no questions; on the other hand, four special types of interrogatives: retorical ones, indirect, tag questions and echo questions. In this paper we analyse yes-no questions, tag questions and echo questions. MINORCAN • Goals • To describe the intonation patterns of yes-no questions and echo questions –QUERY and CHECK in HCRC Map Task- in Catalan, in order to check whether the two types of interrogatives present significant differences. • To compare these interrogative utterances in Majorcan and Minorcan Catalan in order to verify if this type of questions present the same differences with the same distribution in both varieties. A) QUERY (asking for new information) (Subj.) + que + V + compl. H + L* H-H% • Yes-no questions that ask for new information have a falling pitch accent (H+L*) with a final rise boundary tone (H-H%). • The leading tone H is often upstepped. Fig. (1b). A yes-no question in Minorcan: “Que tens un arbre?” (‘Do you have a tree?’) (Subj.) + V + compl. B) CHECK (asking for given information) MAJORCAN [+ certainty in the answer] - Tag questions (with tail) • QUERY (asking for new information) (Subj.), V + compl. / V + compl., (Subj.) H + L* L-L% • Yes-no questions that ask for new information have a falling pitch accent (H+L*) with L-L% boundary tone. • The leading tone H is always upstepped. Fig. (3b). A tag question in Minorcan: “Però deu ser q(u)asi bé lo mateix, o no, trobes?” (‘But it must be the same, must not it?’) Fig. (2b). A tag question in Minorcan: “Damunt sa immobiliària i Caixa Catalunya, no?” (‘Upon real state and Caixa Catalunya, isn’t it?’) Fig. (1a). A yes-no question in Majorcan: “Tens una barberia, tu?” (‘Do you have a barber’s?’) [+ neutrality] - Tag questions (without tail) - Echo questions B) CHECK (asking for given information) (Subj) + V + compl. - Tag questions (with tail) [+ certainty in the answer] Fig. (8b). An echo question in Minorcan: “Per davall?” (‘Underneath?’) Fig. (4b). A tag question in Minorcan: “I sa gasolinera no la tens...” (‘Do not you have the gas station?’) Fig. (2a). A tag question in Majorcan: “Però tens una tenda de roba, no?” (‘But you have a clothes shop, isn’t it?’) Fig. (3a). A tag question in Majorcan: “I te’n vas rectament cap a s’ajuntament, no és vera?” (‘And you go straight towards the town council, right?’) [+ neutrality] - Echo questions Fig. (5b). A tag question in Minorcan: “Nova Moda?” Fig. (9b). An echo question in Minorcan: “No tens barberia?” (‘Don’t you have barber’s?’) Fig. (4a). A tag question in Majorcan: “El camí està...així un poc estret, o no?” (‘The path is a little narrow, isn’t it?’) Fig. (6a). An echo question in Majorcan: “És un punt en blanc?” (‘Is it a point in white?’) - Tag questions (without tail) Fig. (6b). A tag question in Minorcan: “Una línia així en diagonal?” (‘A line like this, diagonally?’) [- neutrality] Fig. (10b). An echo question in Minorcan: “No...?” Fig. (7a). An echo question in Majorcan: “Guarderia?” (‘Nursery?’) [- certainty in the answer] Fig. (5a). A tag question in Majorcan: “Bé, tu has passat per davant ca na Janera? ” (‘Well, have you passed in front of ca na Janera?’) Fig. (7b). A tag question in Minorcan: “Brollador?” (‘Fountain?’) [- certainty in the answer] [- neutrality] Fig. (8a). An echo question in Majorcan: “Immobiliària?” (‘Estate agency?’) • RESULTS IN MINORCAN • QUERY questions: H + L* H-H% • CHECK questions: • Tag questions: H + L* (and boundary tones from L-L% to H-H%, depending on the certainty degree on the answer). • Echo questions: H + L* (with increase of the range with associated no neutral attitudes, i.e. surprise). • RESULTS IN MAJORCAN • 1. QUERY questions: H + L* L-L% (the leading tone H is upstepped) • 2. CHECK questions • a) Tag questions: H + L* (the certainty degree decreases using a descendent tail). • b) Echo questions: H + L*/ L + H* [- neutrality] (no neutral attitudes are conveyed , i.e. surprise, using leading tone H upstepped in H+L*). • CONCLUSIONS • Majorcan and Minorcan coincide with pitch accent (H+L*) but have different strategies (boundary tones, upstepped features) to convey different kinds of information. • Semantic and pragmatic information is very important in order to analyse every interrogative sentence. We have specially considered: whether the question is about new or given information; in tag questions, the certainty degree on the answer; in echo questions, the (+ or – neutral) attitude of the speaker. • Sentence order is also very important to distinguish between QUERY and CHECK questions: i.e. Tens una barberia, tu? (QUERY ‘Do you havea barber’s?’)- Tu tenss’acadèmia? (CHECK ‘Do you have the academy?’). • Cross-dialectal comparisons are necessary in order to describe a language. In Catalan there is still a long road to travel through in this field.