Sentence external elements in Catalan

Abstract

This paper deals with the intonation of sentence external elements in Catalan. Its main purpose is to investigate the claim that there is a correspondence between prosodic form and grammatical function, so that syntactic independence is paralleled by prosodic independency. A related goal is to identify the mechanisms for signalling prosodic independency and/or dependency. To that end, a production experiment was devised eliciting the same sentences in different pitch ranges. The conclusion is that sentence external elements do not constitute a uniform category, either syn- tactically or prosodically. Quotation attributions are nearly always deaccented, appositions and non-restrictive relatives copy the pattern of the main phrase in a lower voice, some parentheticals are produced in a lower pitch range, while sentence adverbs do not show any tonal subordination at all.