Tune-text association patterns in Catalan: An argument for a hierarchical structure of tunes

This article describes a variety of intonation patterns in Central Catalan and examines the process of tonal realization of these tunes over short sequences, namely, monosyllabic phrases and utterances containing just one stressed syllable. When faced with multiple association, Catalan displays at least three different procedures to adapt intonational contours: when the tune is composed of one pitch accent plus a boundary tone sequence, the general strategy used by this language is compression; by contrast, when the tune is made out of two pitch accents plus an edge tone sequence the solution is either to delete (or fail to associate) the first pitch accent (a process which could be understood as tune truncation) or the second one. The contrast between compression and deletion strategies falls out directly from an autosegmental view of into-national contours: since a given metrically strong position cannot bear more than one pitch accent, compression is thus ruled out when melodic tunes contain a minimum of two pitch accents. The contrast between the failure to link the first or the second pitch accent, though, cannot be easily predicted if we follow standard autosegmental assumptions: since this framework assumes that. © 2002, by Walter de Gruyter GmbH & Co. KG. All rights reserved.