The multiple prosodic cues differentiating questions and statements in Miami Cuban Spanish

Previous work on the intonational phonology of Miami Cuban (MC) Spanish [1, 2, 3] has revealed that broad focus declaratives and absolute interrogatives have the same nuclear tones. In laboratory speech, [2] found that these two sentence types, when compared paradigmatically, show significant differences in peak scaling and pitch range [2]. The present study examined peak scaling with syntagmatic comparisons between nuclear and prenuclear peaks as well as paradigmatic comparisons of pitch range and f0 peak timing in laboratory and semi-spontaneous speech. The results reveal significant differences in peak scaling and pitch range, but no differences in peak timing, confirming [2]. However, preliminary perception results reveal no difference in listener interpretation when only peak scaling is manipulated, suggesting free variation or additional cues to sentence modality in this dialect.