The prosodic-gestural relationship in contrastive-focus and categoric declarative statements in the Spanish of Puebla, Mexico

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between prosody and gesture. We hypothesize that a) the difference between narrow-focus and categorical statements are evident not only at the prosody but also at the gestural level, and b) there is an alignment between the apex and the accented syllable in the intonation of the utterance. The results indicate that there are percent differences between the types of gestures that are used in narrow-focus and in categorical statements. In addition, an alignment was observed between the apex and the focus word. Finally, it was found that the prototypical configuration of categorical statements shows an allotoneme H* L% to stress the focus in the core position. However, the same pragmatic function is maintained: marking phonologically the narrow-focus.