Figure 5: Sentence – A garota observava PORta-banDEIras no desfile ‘The girl looked at flag bearers at the parade’, produced in a neutral context with an emphatic stress on pretonic syllable immediately preceding the stressed syllable on head PW (PORta)PW1(banDEIras)PW2, by a speaker from MG.

Distinguishing emphatic and Prosodic Word initial stresses: evidence from Brazilian Portuguese

Production task

- A context sentence was presented on a PC screen, followed by a question heard on headphones referring to that

sentence; speakers had to answer the question using the material displayed on the screen.

(1) The three steps in the production of a sentence with branching PWG in broad focus context:

[Context sentence read on the screen] Os técnicos ensinaram teleprocessamento aos alunos.

‘The technicians taught teleprocessing to the students.’

[Question heard on headphones] O que aconteceu?

‘What happened?’

[Target sentence produced] Os técnicos ensinaram teleprocessamento aos alunos.

‘The technicians taught teleprocessing to the students.

(2) The three steps in the production of a sentence with non-branching PWG in given information context:

[Context sentence read on the screen] Os senadores receberam governadores em Brasília.

‘The senators received governors in Brasilia.’

[Question heard on headphones] Os senadores receberam governadores em Brasília?

‘The senators received governors in Brasilia?’

[Target sentence produced] (Sim) Os senadores receberam governadores em Brasília?

‘(Yes) The senators received governors in Brasilia?’

Introduction

- In Brazilian Portuguese (BP) initial stress (signaled with a H-tone) is computed with reference to the primary

stress position and depends on the number of pretonic syllables (it requires at least three pretonic syllables)

within a Prosodic Word (PW); it is optional and postlexical (Frota & Vigário, 2000; Tenani, 2002; Fernandes,

2007a,b; Vigário & Fernandes-Svartman, 2010):

(1) a. governaDOR b. profeSSOR

| | |

H T* T*

- In branching Prosodic Word Group (PWG), formed by more than one PW with the head corresponding the

rightmost PW, initial stress is associated to the initial syllables of both head and non-head PW in branching

PWG and constitutes an evidence for the PW domain in BP (Vigário & Fernandes-Svartman, 2010).

(2) reCÉMaprisioNAdos

| | |

T* H T*

- In BP secondary stress assignment essentially signals the beginning of the PW in emphatic contexts

(Abaurre & Galves, 1998; Abaurre & Fernandes-Svartman, 2008; Fernandes-Svartman, 2009);

- In emphatic contexts the initial stress and the ‘H-tone’ can coincide with a secondary stress (Fernandes-

Svartman, 2009);

- In European Portuguese (EP) emphatic stress and initial stress are assigned to the first (or in some cases

the second) syllable of a PW and both are optional (Vigário, 2003);

- Emphatic stress: high pitch at the beginning of the word; it highlights the whole word in several Romance

languages, as in Isto é SUbErbo! ‘This is great!’ (e.g. Vigário, 2003; Hualde, 2007);

- In Spanish two stress phenomena occur in initial syllables on the left of a PW and the pragmatic functions

and intonational contours of theses stresses are, in principle, quite distinct. These phenomena are labeled

“rhythmic” and “emphatic” postlexical secondary stress and they are tonally marked (Hualde, 2007).

Discussion & conclusions

- Our results suggest that location within the word and function clearly distinguish between

emphatic stress and initial stress, as summarized below:

(i) Emphatic stress assignment (optional): Emphatic stress is assigned to any pretonic syllable,

irrespective of its distance to the stressed syllable; also occurs in the stressed syllable of PW;

(ii) Initial stress assignment (optional): Initial stress occurs in the first or second syllable of PW,

and it is sensitive to rhythmic conditions (at least two syllables are required between the syllable

bearing initial stress and the word-stressed syllable).

- Both stresses are tonally marked – most often with a H-tone;

- Initial stress is not perceived as emphatic, differently from emphatic stress;

- Both stresses are also distinct in their function: while emphatic stress is used to highlight a PW,

as documented for EP in Vigário (2003), initial stress is an edge phenomenon and may

contribute to signal PW initial position.

- Emphatic stress is also different from focal stress because it does not mark semantic contrast

nor does it require a particular context in order to be felicitous.

Selected references Abaurre, M. B. & Galves, C., “As diferenças rítmicas entre o Português Europeu e o

Português Brasileiro: Uma Abordagem Otimalista e Minimalista”, DELTA - Revista de

Documentação de Estudos em Lingüística Teórica e Aplicada. São Paulo, 14 (2), 377-403,

1998.

Abaurre, M. B. & Fernandes-Svartman, F. R., “Secondary stress, vowel reduction and

rhythmic implementation in Brazilian Portuguese”, in L. Bisol e C. R. Brescancini (Eds.),

Contemporary Phonology in Brazil, 54-83, Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008.

Fernandes, F. R., “Tonal association in neutral and subject narrow focus sentences in

Brazilian Portuguese: a comparison with European Portuguese”. In G. Elordieta & M. Vigário

(Eds), Journal of Portuguese Linguistics (special issue on Prosody in Ibero-Romance and

Related Languages, edited by G. Elordieta & M. Vigário), 5(2)/6(1), 91-115, 2007a.

Fernandes, F. Ordem, focalização e preenchimento em Português: sintaxe e prosódia. PhD

Dissertation. Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Brazil, 2007b.

Fernandes, F. R., “Acento secundário, atribuição tonal e ênfase em português brasileiro

(PB)”. Estudos Lingüísticos, 38, 47-58, 2009.

Frota, S. & Vigário, M., “Aspectos de prosódia comparada: ritmo e entoação no PE e no PB”,

Table 1 – Initial and emphatic tonal events on branching

PWG in contexts eliciting broad focus (new information)

– Figures 1-4.

bernadete.abaurre@gmail.com marina.vigario@mail.telepac.pt pmtoneli@gmail.com

Figure 2: Sentence - Os brasileiros receberam LUso-moçambiÇAnos na

reunião ‘The Brazilians received luso-mozambicans at the meeting’,

produced in neutral context with an initial stress associated to the first

syllable of head PW and an emphatic stress on the stressed syllable of

non-head PW, by speaker AR from PR.

Branching PWG - Neutral contexts

Form: Both emphatic and initial stress are usually produced

with a high tone (H), but there are also cases of low-high (LH)

and high-low (HL) in both varieties of BP (Paraná – PR – and

Minas Gerais – MG).

Function:

Initial stress is an edge phenomenon > delimitative function;

Emphatic stress is used to highlight a PW;

Both can occur in neutral contexts.

Distribution:

Initial stress is only found in the first and second syllables of a

PW and requires a minimum number of pretonic syllables - at

least three pretonic syllables in both varieties of BP;

Emphatic stress can be associated with any pretonic syllable

and also with the stressed syllable within a PW ;

No stresses have been identified in post-tonic syllables in

none of varieties in BP;

Both types of stresses occur in branching and non-branching

PWG and are optional in the two varieties (see 1, 2, 3 and 4);

This research was funded by Fapesp doctoral grant 2010/06748-9 and the FCT Project PTDC/CLE-LIN/119787/2010

Results

Branching PWG – neutral contexts

Non-Branching PWG – Neutral contexts

Table 2 – Initial and emphatic tonal events on non-

branching PWG in contexts eliciting broad focus (given

information) – Figures 5-6.

Figure 1: Sentence - Os estudantes saíram civiliZAdaMENte do debate

‘The students left civilly the debate’, produced in neutral context with

emphatic stress, associated to the first syllable of non-head PW of

branching PWG – by speaker AR from PR.

Inicial and emphatic tonal events in branching PWG PR

(N=104) MG

(N=215)

Initial stress in non-head PW (e.g. civiliZAdaMENte ‘civilly’)

7% 12%

Initial stress in head PW

(e.g. Luso-moçambiCAnos ‘’luzo-mozambicans)

16% 26%

Initial emphatic stress in non- head PW

(e.g. arquilteTOnicaMENte ‘architectonically’)

10% 9%

Initial emphatic stress in head PW (e.g. PORtabanDEIras ‘flag beares’)

3% 24%

Emphatic stress on the stressed syllable of the non-head PW

(e.g. MULticulturaLISmo ‘multiculturalism’)

24% 18%

Emphatic stress on the stressed syllable of the head PW

(e.g. eLEtricaMENte ‘full of energy’) 6% 6%

Inicial and emphatic tonal events in non-branching PWG PR

(N=79) MG

(N=145)

Initial stress in PW (e.g. aportuguesaMENto ‘adapted loanfwords for Portuguese’)

9% 30%

Initial emphatic stress in PW

(e.g. diploMAtas ‘diplomats’)

1% 3%

Emphatic stress on the stressed syllable of the PW

(e.g. baTAta ‘potato’) 1% 4%

Figure 3: Sentence – Nós saímos eLEtricaMENte da academia ‘We left

full of energy (electrically) the gym’, produced in a neutral context with

an emphatic stress associated to the stressed syllable of the head PW

– by speaker NA from MG.

Figure 4: Sentence – A garota observava PORta-banDEIras no desfile

‘The girl looked at flag bearers at the parade’, produced in a neutral

context with an emphatic stress on the pretonic syllable immediately

preceding the stressed syllable on the head PW - by speaker NA from

MG.

Figure 5: Sentence – Sim. Os pesquisadores fizeram

aportuguesaMENtos dos estrangeirismos ‘The researchers adapted

some loanwords for Portuguese’, produced in neutral context with an

initial stress associated to the first or second syllable of PW - by speaker

CR from PR.

Figure 6: Sentence – Os deputados receberam diploMAtas no

congresso ‘The representatives in government received diplomats at the

congress’, produced in neutral context with an emphatic stress

associated to the first syllable of PW - by speaker AC from MG.

Figure 1: Map with Uberaba (MG) highlighted Figure 2: Map with Cascavel (PR) highlighted

Hypotheses and Future research

- It is possible that the emphatic stress found in neutral sentences is

also found in unstressed and stressed syllables of sentences

produced in focus-eliciting context; this may explain some of the

results in Toneli, Vigário & Abaurre (2013);

- Furthermore, factors other than semantic context may also

influence speakers in their choice of producing emphatic stress (e.g.

type and size of PWG; frequency of use of the words and others).

Testing the effect of these factors can further inform on the nature

and phonology of emphatic stress in BP and will be left for future

research.

+Priscila Toneli, ^Marina Vigário & +Maria B. Abaurre +Universidade Estadual de Campinas (IEL/ UNICAMP)

^Universidade de Lisboa (Laboratório de Fonética – CLUL/FLUL)

TAL 2014 – The 4th International Symposium on Tonal Aspects of Languages, Radboud University Nijmegen, May 13-16, 2014

Non-braching PWG - Neutral contexts

The same distribution for the emphatic stress and the initial

stress was found in non-branching PWG in both varieties;

The same variation of tonal choice at the beginning of PW: H-

tone or LH or HL tones.

in R. V. Castro & P. Barbosa (Eds.), Actas do XV Encontro Nacional da Associação

Portuguesa de Linguística, vol. 1, 533-555, Coimbra: APL, 2000.

Hualde, J. I. “Stress removal and stress addition in Spanish”. Journal of Portuguese

Linguistics (special issue on Prosody in Ibero-Romance and Related Languages, edited

by G. Elordieta & M. Vigário), 5(2)/6(1), 59-89, 2007.

Maps of Brazil [maps on internet]. Accessed 06 march 2014. Available at

http://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki.

Tenani, L. E. Domínios prosódicos no Português. PhD Dissertation, Universidade Estadual

de Campinas, Campinas. 2002.

Vigário, M. The Prosodic Word in European Portuguese . Berlin/New York: Mouton de

Gruyter, 2003

Toneli, P. M.; Vigário, M.; Abaurre, M. B. M. “Focus assignment in complex words with two

prosodic words in Brazilian Portuguese” poster presented at Phonetics and Phonology in

Iberia – PaPI 2013, University of Lisbon, Lisbon, 2013.

Vigário, M.; Fernandes-Svartman, F. R., “A atribuição de acentos tonais em compostos no

português do Brasil”. In Actas do XXV Encontro da Associação Portuguesa de Linguística,

Porto, 769-786, Tip. Nunes, Ltda - Maia, 2010.

Question

- The nature of these two types of stresses in BP and the difference between them if any (topics not

investigated before in a systematic way in BP).

Main goals

- To distinguish initial and emphatic stresses in BP in neutral declarative sentences.

Method

The corpus

- 20 read sentences, containing a branching PWG, elicited in a broad focus context; three repetitions per

sentence;

- 10 read sentences, , containing a non-branching PWG, elicited in a given information context, included for

comparison about tonal association;

- A branching PWG contains morphological words formed of more than one PW (e.g. root compounds, V+N

compounds, -mente adverbs and z-avaliative adjectives) and non-branching PWG contains a single PW.

Speakers:

- 3 Female speakers from Cascavel, Paraná state: 20 sentences x 3 speakers x 3 repetitions (104

analysed and 76 sentences not included (mispronounced) with branching PWG); 10 sentences x 3

speakers x 3 repetitions (79 analysed and 11 sentences not included (mispronounced) with non-branching

PWG).

- 10 speakers from Uberaba, Minas Gerais state (Brazil): 10 sentences x 10 speakers x 3 repetitions (215

analysed and 235 sentences not included (mispronounced) with branching PWG); 5 sentences x 10

speakers x 3 repetitions (145 analysed and 5 sentences not included (mispronounced) with non-branching

PWG.

- Age: between 20 to 30 years old;

Prosodic labeling: Pitch accents and

boundary tones were labeled based on

the inspection of the F0 contour and

perception, using P-ToBI (Frota et al. to

appear).