Abstract

This paper reports the results of an experimental study on the intonation patterns used to communicate narrow focus in Castilian Spanish absolute interrogatives. The results show that three different intonation patterns are used on words in narrow focus in absolute interrogatives. In addition it is found that a tonally marked prosodic boundary following a word in narrow focus and a post-focal reduced pitch range are often used. While this is the first study dedicated to focal intonation in Castilian Spanish absolute interrogatives, a number of studies have addressed focal intonation in Castilian Spanish declaratives. The results of the present study are compared with the results of the studies on declaratives in order to determine what aspects of focal intonation are unique to each sentence type and what aspects are common to focal marking across sentence types.