Relativism and Universalism in Linguistics - Fachbereich 10 ...

Section F: Phonology 71
Despite the very rigorous methods and the often proven conclusions of French diachronic
phonetics, there are many reasons to believe that the impact of other languages and substrata
has been deeply underestimated, and that the system does not work completely by itself like a
pendulum, directly from Latin to French.
This paper aims at analyzing some cultural explanations of this latinocentrism, and at showing
some relevant cases which challenges the diachronic phonetic system by implying the impact
of other languages than Latin. The examples of the words “oiseau”, “chien” and “gauche” are
more specifically analyzed.
The universality of intonation:
some common and language specific patterns in interrogative
intonation
Ramírez Verdugo, Mª Dolores / Astruc-Aguilera, Lluïsa / Morán, Mª Berta
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid / The Open University in the East of England / Universidad
Complutense de Madrid
dolores.ramirez@uam.es;luisa@astruc.info;bmoran@arrakis.es
Intonation is a complex linguistic system that interacts with grammatical, pragmatic and
affective levels of language description (Halliday 1994; Snow and Balog 2002). The
understanding and interpretation of the pragmatic meaning of spoken discourse largely
depends on the choice of intonation patterns (cf. Pierrehumbert and Hirschberg, 1990;
Couper-Kühlen and Selting, 1996; Brazil, 1997; or Wichmann 2000). However, even though
intonation could be regarded as one of the universal resources available to express meaning in
many languages, “the system of intonation and the interaction between intonational and
lexico-grammatical form varies from language to language (Bolinger, 1986; Cruz-Ferreira,
1987: 103; Ladd, 1996: 113; Hirst & Di Cristo, 1998). This variation often leads to difficulties
in the acquisition of L2 intonation, mainly due to the unsatisfactory overuse of a very limited
variety of patterns in the foreign language (Ramírez Verdugo 2002, 2003, 2005, 2006;
Ramírez Verdugo and Romero Trillo, 2005). Any slight change in intonation, which initially
may appear to be insignificant, implies some changes in the semantics and pragmatics of the
final message as perceived by interlocutors (Kelm 1995: 435). Furthermore, it seems that
while mistakes in the pronunciation of segmental sounds are generally overlooked at, deviant
intonation patterns may affect comprehension negatively and provoke pragmatic
consequences on the spoken discourse (cf. Anderson-Hsieh et al. 1992, and Derwing and
Munro 1997). In this respect, Cutler (1984) suggests that listeners, even from very early
developmental stages, perceive and attend to intonation as a cue to the processing and
understanding of the information being exchanged. In fact, several linguists have proved that
the intonation system of a language is one of the first phonetic features acquired by a child
(Lieberman, 1986; Cruttenden, 1994 and Snow and Balog, 2002). While in these first stages
of language acquisition children mostly rely on prosodic prompts, in later stages, once
children have acquired more syntactic, semantic and pragmatic competence, intonation
becomes subconscious and automatic to the message (cf. Berkovits, 1980: 271, 279). It would
be interesting then, to examine the three intonational systems available while learning foreign
languages: L1 and L2 intonation systems and the learners’ interlanguage intonation in order to
answer recurrent yet not answered questions related to universal principles versus language
specific varieties; language transfer versus learning processes; psycholinguistic and
sociolinguistic factors, etc.
This study presents an account of interrogative intonation found in the variety of Castilian
Spanish spoken in Madrid, Standard British English and Spanish learner or English within the