Abstract

DELGADO YUSTE, DAMELYS CAROLINA  and  DEL VALLE INCIARTE ASUAJE, YURBITAY. Study of prosodic focalization in the speech of Maracay. Cuad. linguist. hisp. [online]. 2013, n.22, pp.13-26. ISSN 0121-053X.

Abstract This research article is a study on intonation, concentrating on the analysis of tonal accents in the focalization of statements from the sociolinguistic corpus of the city of Maracay. The sample includes 162 statements, 135 containing new information and 27 containing existing information. Currently, the former have been processed, which represent 83.3% of the total sample. In this percentage, three types of tonal accents were identified: H*, L+H* and H+L*. H* was the predominant accent; present in 133 statements. Based on those results shows that high mono-tonal accent (H*) is a marker of focus in new information. Pragmatically, this means that, for the speaker, the most relevant information is found in what is introduced in the locutionary act for the first time.

Keywords : Intonation; focus; spontaneous speech.

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