The role of word edge tones in Catalan and Spanish Eva Estebas-Vilaplana & Pilar Prieto UNED & ICREA/UAB & PAPI. Bellaterra, June 2005 Catalan and Spanish prenuclear rises L consistently anchored with the onset of the accented syllable. H generally displaced to the postaccentual syllable (Prieto 1995 and Estebas-Vilaplana 2000, 2003). Recent experiments show that H strictly aligns with the end of the word. Thus, Estebas- Vilaplana analyses H prenuclear rises as sequences of a low pitch accent (L*) plus a word edge tone (H) anchored at the end of the word. Conclusion:  Catalan and Spanish speakers use H placement consistently to disambiguate different word-boundary locations: Hs are more retracted in word-final accents than in penultimate or antepenultimate accents.  Yet, no strict H anchoring to word-edges found. GOAL: To examine whether H anchoring is used to disambiguate sentences. If word-edge tones are present, the H should be aligned at the end of words regardless of the number of posttonic syllables. MATERIALS: 20 pairs of potentially ambiguous sentences which have the same segmental and accentual composition and are only distinguished by word boundary location. CATALAN: words with a pitch accent on the final and penultimate syllables. Comprà ventalls “s(he) bought fans”fin Compraven talls “s(he) bought pieces”pen (med) SPANISH: words with a pitch accent on the final, penultimate and antepenultimate syllables. Ve bovinos “s(he) sees cows”fin Bebo vinos “s(he) drinks wines”pen Sube Melino “Melino Balnco goes up”pen Súbeme lino “Bring up the linen for me”ante SUBJECTS: 3 speakers of each language read the 20 pairs 4 times (40 x 4 = 160 sentences per speaker, a total of 480 utterances per language). Goals of the study To investigate the alignment patterns of H prenuclear peaks in broad focus declaratives in Catalan and Spanish and clarify the role of word edge tones in the two languages. A production test examines the effects of within-word position on H alignment and duration patterns in pairs of ambiguous sentences. Two perception tests check whether H alignment can be a helpful perceptual cue to identify word boundaries between otherwise identical sentences. RESULTS: Production test Comprà ventalls Sube Melino Compraven tallsSúbeme lino EFFECTS OF WITHIN-WORD POSITION ON H LOCATION  All peaks displaced to the postaccented syllable/s.  Differences statistically significant for all speakers (two-tailed t-tests significant at p< for Catalan and Spanish). CATALAN SPANISH Perception tests  H peak delay as a function of within-word position  Clear effects of within-word position on H placement in the two languages: peaks are less displaced in fin-accented words than in pen-accented and ante- accented words (longer H delay).  Differences statistically significant for all speakers (two-tailed t-tests significant at p< for Catalan and for Spanish).  H distance end accented syllable as a function of within- word position  H distance word boundary as a function of within-word position SPANISH CATALAN  Hs in fin-accented words are located after the end of the word.  Hs in pen- and ante- accented words are located before the end of the word.  The data show no strict word- anchoring effects. General conclusions:  H is not consistently aligned with the end of the word, thus no L*H prenuclear rises.  H location is consistenly affected by the position of the accented syllable within in the word.  No clear word-final or word-initial lengthening effects.  Catalan and Spanish listeners seem to use tonal alignment differences due to within-word position to identify words that are ambiguous for word-boundary position. GOAL: to check whether H alignment differences can be used to identify word boundaries between otherwise identical sentences. Identification experiment MATERIALS: 10 ambiguous utterances from the production test for both languages. SUBJECTS: 12 listeners for Catalan and 20 for Spanish heard the ambiguous utterances a maximum of three times and had to identify the sentence. RESULTS: low rate of identification for the Catalan sentences (35 to 66% of correct responses) and variable rate of identification for Spanish sentences (25% to 95%). Much better identification of sentences with ante-accented words. Discrimination experiment MATERIALS: 10 (for Catalan) and 24 (for Spanish) ambiguous utterances in pairs from the production test. SUBJECTS: the same listeners as before heard the utterances in pairs and had to choose the order in which the stimuli were heard. RESULTS: variable rate of identification for both Catalan (30% to 90% of correct responses) and Spanish (40% to 95%). Better identification of Spanish sentences when heard in pairs (except for three cases). CATALAN SPANISH  Strong correlation between H delay and syllable duration for all speakers both in Catalan (correlation coef. 0,67-0,82) and in Spanish (correlation coef. 0,42-0,91).  Hs in fin-accented words (e.g. ve bovinos) are less delayed than Hs in pen-accented words (e.g. bebo vinos) for Catalan and Spanish; Hs in pen-accented words (e.g. sube Melino) are less delayed than Hs in ante-accented words (e.g. súbeme lino) for Spanish.  H peak delay as a function of the duration of the accented syllable Example from CATALAN Example from SPANISH EFFECTS OF WITHIN-WORD POSITION ON SYLLABLE DURATION  Duration of the accented syllable as a function of within-word position  Duration of the postaccentual syllable as a function of within-word position CATALANSPANISH CATALAN SPANISH  No clear duration effects. Word-final accented sylls. are slightly longer for alll speakers except for AG (Cat.). Significant differences (p=0.004) only found for EV (Sp.).  No clear duration effects. Syllables in word-initial position are slightly longer for speakers PG, PP (Cat.) and TO (Sp.). No significant differences found.