The Prosody of Agreeing and Disagreeing Responses to Negative Statements in Spanish

Abstract

Previous work shows that there are prosodic differences between agreeing and disagreeing responses to positive and negative polar questions (Goodhue & Wagner 2018; González-Fuentes et al. 2015, among others). In this study, we focus on the prosodic properties of responses to negative statements in Spanish, a research question that has received little attention and which has not been explored in any detail. That is, we study what characterizes prosodically the following types of responses to negative statements: A: Los profesores no corrigieron los ejercicios. ‘The teachers didn’t correct the exercises.’; B1: {Sí, No}, los profesores no corrigieron los ejercicios. ‘{Yes, No}, the teachers didn’t correct the exercises.’ [agreeing response]; B2: {Sí, No}, los profesores sí corrigieron los ejercicios. ‘{Yes, No}, the teachers did correct the exercises.’ [disagreeing response]. There are two noteworthy findings. On the one hand, there is a Fall-Rise contour of the response particle (RespP, sí / no), which is observed almost exclusively in disagreeing responses. On the other hand, within the sentence following the response particle, disagreeing responses display four characteristics: (a) a longer duration of the Polarity Particle (PolP); (b) a bigger fall in F0 between the PolP and the verb; (c) a slightly higher F0 of the PolP with respect to the end of the subject; and (d) a longer duration at the end of the subject (with the RespP No). Overall, the PolP in disagreeing responses displays a substantial degree of prosodic prominence, compared to responses in agreement. Also, our results indicate that the RespP does not have an effect on the variables we investigated.