Las unidades de entonación del español de Valdivia, Chile

Abstract

The intonation used by speakers in a corpus of 18 personal interviews, representative of the Spanish spoken in Valdivia, is analyzed in the light of the model of the Tone Sequence Theory (Ladd 1983) and the notions of the functions of intonation postulated in Bolinger 1986. The findings showed that the movement of falling intonation is more frequently used to signal conclusiveness, end of statements, and to express the pragmatic communicative functions of assurance, assertiveness, finality, emphasis, reference and deemphasis. The movement of rising intonation signals inconclusiveness, marks intrasentence boundaries at word, phrase and clause levels, and expresses the pragmatic communicative functions of inconclusiveness, sus- pense and deemphasis. Rising intonation is also frequently used to mark the end of interrogative sentences, with the pragmatic function of eliciting information