Patterns of prominence, phrasing and tonal events in Spanish news reading: An illustrative case study

Abstract

The present study examines the patterns in stress, phrasing and intonation found in a Spanish corpus of news read by broadcasters to describe the prosodic strategies that can be considered as genre-distinguishing features. Results indicate that, firstly, the main stress modifications concern the upgrading of unstressed syllables to accented ones, the stress shift to mark word-initial boundaries and the maintenance of adjacent stresses. Secondly, the special features related to phrasing are unexpected pauses, which enhance the prosodic units that offer new information, and the prosodic marking of initial edges of groups with the aim of capturing the listener’s attention. Finally, the most relevant tonal events that identify the typical chanting of broadcasters are a recurrent use of rises whose f0 peak coincides with the stressed syllable, a variety of non-falling pitch movements signalling intermediate phrasing, and the use of rising-falling pitch movements to signal ends. All the described prosodic and tonal strategies contribute to obtaining an emphatic style in news reading and are representative of a prosodically marked genre.