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In:Intonational Grammar in Ibero-Romance: Approaches across linguistic subfields
Edited by Meghan E. Armstrong, Nicholas Henriksen and Maria del Mar Vanrell
[Issues in Hispanic and Lusophone Linguistics 6] 2016
► pp. 45–68

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Stylistic variation in the intonation of European Portuguese teenagers and adults

 | Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa (FLUL)
 | Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Lisboa (FLUL)
 | Instituto de Engenharia de Sistemas e Computadores – Investigação e Desenvolvimento em Lisboa (INESC-ID)
Published online: 31 March 2016
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ihll.6.03mat
The present study aims to investigate intonation contours in phrase-final position, in a corpus of spontaneous and prepared unscripted presentations from teenagers (14–15 years old) and adults, collected in a school context. Taking into account the differences between phrasing levels (ToBI breaks 3 and 4), we show that the frequency of low/falling vs. high/rising contours – mainly (H+)L L and (L+)H H – varies across oral presentation types. Adults and teenagers follow distinct strategies, though cross-gender differences are also a source of variation. We interpret these changes as an adaptation effect to the speaking styles specifically required at school, which call for the speaker′s effort to speak clearly and to keep the listeners attention, and ultimately as “intelligibility-oriented” speaking style changes.
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