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<DIV></DIV><FONT face="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt">The Department of Linguistics at USC and the Hispanic
Linguistics Student Association proudly present, in collaboration with the USC
Department of Spanish and Portuguese and the American Association of Teachers of
Spanish and Portuguese:<BR><BR></SPAN><FONT size=4><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 14pt"><B><BR>Intonation and the Perception of Focus in
Castilian Spanish:<BR>Two Studies and their Implications for Intonational
Phonology<BR></B><BR>Timothy L. Face,<BR>University of
Minnesota<BR></SPAN></FONT><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"><BR>Monday, February 9,
2009 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm<BR>Grace Ford Salvatori 118<BR><BR>Following the talk,
dinner will be served in the Linguistics Conference Room<BR></SPAN></FONT><FONT
size=1><FONT face="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 9pt"><BR></SPAN></FONT></FONT><FONT
face="Calibri, Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN
style="FONT-SIZE: 12pt"><BR>Abstract:<BR>Within the Autosegmental-Metrical
theory of intonational phonology, the temporal alignment of tonal events – such
as the location of an F0 valley or an F0 rise with respect to the edges of a
stressed syllable – is commonly considered to be of phonological importance.
In Castilian Spanish, the F0 valley is aligned at or near the onset of the
stressed syllable in words in both broad focus and narrow focus, but the
alignment of the F0 peak distinguishes these focus types, with an F0 peak within
the stressed syllable marking narrow focus and an F0 peak following the stressed
syllable marking broad focus. As a result of this and other similar
findings, the temporal alignment of tonal events has been a point of
considerable discussion in phonological analyses of Spanish
intonation.<BR> <BR>While there is a considerable amount of speech
production data on the temporal alignment of F0 rises in broad focus and narrow
focus contexts in Castilian Spanish, there has been no perceptual research to
verify that the alignment of these rises actually communicates to listeners the
pragmatic meanings (i.e. the focus types) that they have been claimed to
communicate based on speech production data. In this talk I will present
the results of two perceptual studies that investigate the communicative
importance of the temporal alignment of F0 peaks as well as that of other
potential intonational cues to focus type in Castilian Spanish: the position of
the following F0 valley, the depth of the following F0 valley, and the scaling
of following portion of the F0 contour.<BR> <BR>The results challenge the
status of peak alignment as the primary intonational marker of focus type.
The results of the first study show that peak height is a stronger cue to
focus type than is peak alignment. The results of the second study show
that the strongest intonational cue to narrow focus in Castilian Spanish is the
scaling of the F0 contour after the word in focus. Having discussed the
results, I will then discuss their theoretical implications, including the
challenges posed for current analyses within the Autosegmental-Metrical theory
as well as for the theory itself.<BR><BR><BR><BR>Email inquiries to: <A
href="lingtalk@college.usc.edu">lingtalk@college.usc.edu</A> <BR><A
href="http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/ling/newsevents/colloquia.shtml">http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/ling/newsevents/colloquia.shtml</A><BR><BR>This
event was also made possible with funding from the Graduate and Professional
Student Senate (GPSS)<BR></SPAN><SPAN style="FONT-SIZE: 11pt"><BR>
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