Phonology of the intonational phrase

Abstract

The primary and secondary phonological associations in the contrast of textual continuity versus conclusion are studied. This problem is investigated in the context of the intonational intermediate phrase, minor (ip), and the intonational major phrase (IP), in the phrase accent (ip H-) and in the phrase accent and the edge tone (ip L- IP L%). The final pitch accents of phrases belong to proparoxytone, paroxytone and oxytone words. The corpus is integrated by texts read and emitted by the author, an informant from Colombia. The results indicate that the phrase accent and edge tone influence the final tonal accent through changes in the phonological association, with the purpose of marking the pragmatic contrast among the two opposite phrases: the minor phrase (continuity) and the major phrase (conclusion).