Mercedes Cabrera | Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria (original) (raw)
Papers by Mercedes Cabrera
Low tone in intonation: phonetic or phonological?
La entonación nuclear de los enunciados declarativos den el español de Canarias
In this paper we describe the procedure followed in the design and recording of a set of videos f... more In this paper we describe the procedure followed in the design and recording of a set of videos for teaching and learning 'English phonetics and phonology', a second-year undergraduate course at Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The student's L1 is Spanish. Two different types of technological support were used: screencast and Powerpoint® presentations. The traditional whiteboard together with the lecturer's presence also contributed both to the integrated learning of certain acoustic/articulatory aspects of the course contents and to the use of specific software for speech analysis. This video production owns the advantage of being an interactive and autonomous tool which favours a continuous learning process on the student's side.
Semántica procedimental y entonación de los enunciados interrogativos de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Prosodic correlates of communication: boundary tone choice as an instruction for message interpretation from a multilevel linguistic perspective
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Dec 1, 2022
Most intonational studies of Spanish declarative sentences do not include a phonetic-phonological... more Most intonational studies of Spanish declarative sentences do not include a phonetic-phonological approach integrating the description of intonation tunes together with their pragmatic interpretations in the framework of a multilevel theory of communication. In this paper, we present a discourse-oriented analysis of read news speech in Spanish. Its integrated twofold orientation in terms of the universally well-accepted intonational framework, the Autosegmental-Metrical Theory, together with another universally recognised cognitive theory of communication, Relevance Theory, reveals that boundary tones constitute a powerful phonological unit to lead subjects through a structured discourse, and a contextualised presentation of information. In addition, our multilevel model of boundary tone interpretations also accounts for the socio-cultural use of politeness together with its orientation towards the different individuals in the communicative act: the speaker, the hearer, or both.
Aproximación a la variación léxica y prosódica en noticias de radio en español entre 1960 y 2010
There is wide acceptance of the relationship between languages for specific purposes (LSP), somet... more There is wide acceptance of the relationship between languages for specific purposes (LSP), sometimes called special languages and terminology. Both are present in the same specialized communication environments and participate of the same specialized knowledge. Yet, the restricted interpretation of terminology that sometimes has been made, considering it just as a set of lexical items, has limited the importance of its study in the field of special languages and in LSP. In this paper, some reflections on the theoretical as well as the practical aspects are presented in order to enhance their relationship. 1. Introducción En el título que he propuesto para esta conferencia aparecen unidas las lenguas para fines específicos y la terminología, pero hemos de convenir, desde un principio, que ambas admiten diversas interpretaciones. Por ello, comenzaré acotando el alcance que pueden tener y el sentido con el que las planteo aquí. Luego veremos las relaciones existentes entre ellas, y la...
Neophilologus, 2002
In this paper, we analyse the formulation of promise in Medieval English medical recipes followin... more In this paper, we analyse the formulation of promise in Medieval English medical recipes following the Theory of Relevance. Our data for analysis consists of formulae normally found at the end of medieval recipes and which have been labelled as efficacy phrases or statements. A first glance at these expressions suggests that the writer is indeed attesting to the value
Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos
La mayoría de los estudios de entonación de las declarativas en español carece de un enfoque foné... more La mayoría de los estudios de entonación de las declarativas en español carece de un enfoque fonético-fonológico que relacione la descripción de sus contornos con las interpretaciones pragmáticas de los mismos en el marco de una teoría multinivel de la comunicación. En este artículo ofrecemos un análisis del discurso del habla utilizada en las noticias leídas en español. La doble orientación de este análisis, con dos teorías ampliamente aceptadas, (la teoría métrico-autosegmental para el estudio de la entonación y la teoría de la relevancia para el estudio pragmático de los enunciados), revela que los tonos de frontera constituyen una poderosa unidad fonológica que guía a los sujetos a través de la estructura del discurso y de la presentación contextualizada de la información. Nuestro modelo multinivel explica, asimismo, el uso socio-cultural de la cortesía y su orientación en relación con los distintos actores del acto comunicativo: el hablante, el oyente, o ambos.
Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 2003
In this paper we study the phonological manifestation of various intonational focus domains in Ca... more In this paper we study the phonological manifestation of various intonational focus domains in Castilian Spanish. We propose that downstep is one of the intonational signallers of focus in this language. The phonological problems of accounting for this phenomenon in Pierrehumbertian models are explored. Alternative solutions are offered following the single-tone model put forward by Cabrera Abreu (2000) within the Government Phonology framework, taking into account other proposals by the author and her co-workers. Typically, the prefocal and focal items participate in licensing relations which integrate them in a well-formed phonological structure in terms of onsets and nuclei respectively as the only two possible constituents within another major constituent, the intonation group. Pitch movements in the prefocal and focal items in the various focus domains are accounted for by the presence / absence of T(one) associated to different constituent boundaries. In addition, the constituent licensing the focal item is preceded by an intonation group whose nuclear constituent is empty, thus showing toneless boundaries which are responsible for the observed downstep effect.
Language Resources and Evaluation, 2013
Literature review on prosody reveals the lack of corpora for prosodic studies in Catalan and Span... more Literature review on prosody reveals the lack of corpora for prosodic studies in Catalan and Spanish. In this paper, we present a corpus intended to fill this gap. The corpus comprises two distinct data-sets, a news subcorpus and a dialogue subcorpus, the latter containing either conversational or task-oriented speech. More than 25 h were recorded by twenty eight speakers per language. Among these speakers, eight were professional (four radio news broadcasters and four advertising actors). The entire material presented here has been transcribed, aligned with the
The aim of this paper is to present a phonological description of the boundary tones in final and... more The aim of this paper is to present a phonological description of the boundary tones in final and nonfinal declarative sentences in Spanish, drawn from a read news corpus and a dialogue corpus. The final clauses tend to finish with L*L% and sometimes L+H*L%. Four different pitch configurations can be found for non-final patterns: a rise (L*H%), a fallto-mid (H*!H%), a fall-rise (H*LH%) and a sustained tone, which presents different phonetic manifestations depending on the pitch level of the previous accent (H*, !H* or L*). These findings question the validity of the traditional Sp_ToBI convention (HL%) to describe a sustained tone since it cannot account for a level pitch after !H* or L*. A new boundary tone, =%, is proposed whose feature for pitch height is underspecified. For this reason, it can adopt the values of H, !H or L, according to the pitch height of the last accent.
Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, 1999
Interferencias de la entonación del español de Canarias en la del inglés RP en enunciados interrogativos de tipo neutro: un estudio piloto
La Luz No Interrumpida Homenaje a Eugenio Padorno 2012 Isbn 978 84 7882 733 6 Pags 359 370, 2012
Acoustic phonetics and EFL teaching on CD-Rom. A pilot study
Actas Del Xxiv Congreso Internacional De Aesla Recurso Electronico Aprendizaje De Lenguas Uso Del Lenguaje Y Modelacion Cognitiva Perspectivas Aplicadas Entre Disciplinas 2007 Isbn 978 84 611 6897 2, 2007
Phonological analysis of medial focal accent in Spanish and English
Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference of Aedean Lleida 17 19 December 1998 2000 Isbn 84 8409 045 0 Pags 173 178, 2000
... por Pere Gallardo, Enric Llurda Giménez, 2000, ISBN 84-8409-045-0 , págs. 173-178; Recoge los... more ... por Pere Gallardo, Enric Llurda Giménez, 2000, ISBN 84-8409-045-0 , págs. 173-178; Recoge los contenidos presentados a: Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos. Congreso (22. 1998. Lleida). Fundación Dialnet. Acceso de usuarios registrados. ...
La formulación de la promesa en el caso de los recetarios médicos meidevales españoles
Studia Humanitatis in Honorem Antonio Cabrera Perera 2002 Isbn 84 95792 61 3 Pags 353 364, 2002
The phonological representation of edge tones in Spanish alternative questions
... Finally, Sosa (1999), who puts forward a cross-dialectal comparison of Spanish, and consequen... more ... Finally, Sosa (1999), who puts forward a cross-dialectal comparison of Spanish, and consequently, a wide range of data, regards T-as ... H-or H%) is most descriptively and explanatorily adequate for the end of the first disjunct in alternative interrogatives in Spanish, in the ...
La representación fonológica del tono
Vector Plus Miscelanea Cientifico Cultural, 1996
Atlas Multimedia de prosodia del Espacio Románico en Canarias
ABSTRACT Póster
Low tone in intonation: phonetic or phonological?
La entonación nuclear de los enunciados declarativos den el español de Canarias
In this paper we describe the procedure followed in the design and recording of a set of videos f... more In this paper we describe the procedure followed in the design and recording of a set of videos for teaching and learning 'English phonetics and phonology', a second-year undergraduate course at Universidad de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. The student's L1 is Spanish. Two different types of technological support were used: screencast and Powerpoint® presentations. The traditional whiteboard together with the lecturer's presence also contributed both to the integrated learning of certain acoustic/articulatory aspects of the course contents and to the use of specific software for speech analysis. This video production owns the advantage of being an interactive and autonomous tool which favours a continuous learning process on the student's side.
Semántica procedimental y entonación de los enunciados interrogativos de Las Palmas de Gran Canaria
Prosodic correlates of communication: boundary tone choice as an instruction for message interpretation from a multilevel linguistic perspective
DOAJ (DOAJ: Directory of Open Access Journals), Dec 1, 2022
Most intonational studies of Spanish declarative sentences do not include a phonetic-phonological... more Most intonational studies of Spanish declarative sentences do not include a phonetic-phonological approach integrating the description of intonation tunes together with their pragmatic interpretations in the framework of a multilevel theory of communication. In this paper, we present a discourse-oriented analysis of read news speech in Spanish. Its integrated twofold orientation in terms of the universally well-accepted intonational framework, the Autosegmental-Metrical Theory, together with another universally recognised cognitive theory of communication, Relevance Theory, reveals that boundary tones constitute a powerful phonological unit to lead subjects through a structured discourse, and a contextualised presentation of information. In addition, our multilevel model of boundary tone interpretations also accounts for the socio-cultural use of politeness together with its orientation towards the different individuals in the communicative act: the speaker, the hearer, or both.
Aproximación a la variación léxica y prosódica en noticias de radio en español entre 1960 y 2010
There is wide acceptance of the relationship between languages for specific purposes (LSP), somet... more There is wide acceptance of the relationship between languages for specific purposes (LSP), sometimes called special languages and terminology. Both are present in the same specialized communication environments and participate of the same specialized knowledge. Yet, the restricted interpretation of terminology that sometimes has been made, considering it just as a set of lexical items, has limited the importance of its study in the field of special languages and in LSP. In this paper, some reflections on the theoretical as well as the practical aspects are presented in order to enhance their relationship. 1. Introducción En el título que he propuesto para esta conferencia aparecen unidas las lenguas para fines específicos y la terminología, pero hemos de convenir, desde un principio, que ambas admiten diversas interpretaciones. Por ello, comenzaré acotando el alcance que pueden tener y el sentido con el que las planteo aquí. Luego veremos las relaciones existentes entre ellas, y la...
Neophilologus, 2002
In this paper, we analyse the formulation of promise in Medieval English medical recipes followin... more In this paper, we analyse the formulation of promise in Medieval English medical recipes following the Theory of Relevance. Our data for analysis consists of formulae normally found at the end of medieval recipes and which have been labelled as efficacy phrases or statements. A first glance at these expressions suggests that the writer is indeed attesting to the value
Revista de Lenguas para Fines Específicos
La mayoría de los estudios de entonación de las declarativas en español carece de un enfoque foné... more La mayoría de los estudios de entonación de las declarativas en español carece de un enfoque fonético-fonológico que relacione la descripción de sus contornos con las interpretaciones pragmáticas de los mismos en el marco de una teoría multinivel de la comunicación. En este artículo ofrecemos un análisis del discurso del habla utilizada en las noticias leídas en español. La doble orientación de este análisis, con dos teorías ampliamente aceptadas, (la teoría métrico-autosegmental para el estudio de la entonación y la teoría de la relevancia para el estudio pragmático de los enunciados), revela que los tonos de frontera constituyen una poderosa unidad fonológica que guía a los sujetos a través de la estructura del discurso y de la presentación contextualizada de la información. Nuestro modelo multinivel explica, asimismo, el uso socio-cultural de la cortesía y su orientación en relación con los distintos actores del acto comunicativo: el hablante, el oyente, o ambos.
Catalan Journal of Linguistics, 2003
In this paper we study the phonological manifestation of various intonational focus domains in Ca... more In this paper we study the phonological manifestation of various intonational focus domains in Castilian Spanish. We propose that downstep is one of the intonational signallers of focus in this language. The phonological problems of accounting for this phenomenon in Pierrehumbertian models are explored. Alternative solutions are offered following the single-tone model put forward by Cabrera Abreu (2000) within the Government Phonology framework, taking into account other proposals by the author and her co-workers. Typically, the prefocal and focal items participate in licensing relations which integrate them in a well-formed phonological structure in terms of onsets and nuclei respectively as the only two possible constituents within another major constituent, the intonation group. Pitch movements in the prefocal and focal items in the various focus domains are accounted for by the presence / absence of T(one) associated to different constituent boundaries. In addition, the constituent licensing the focal item is preceded by an intonation group whose nuclear constituent is empty, thus showing toneless boundaries which are responsible for the observed downstep effect.
Language Resources and Evaluation, 2013
Literature review on prosody reveals the lack of corpora for prosodic studies in Catalan and Span... more Literature review on prosody reveals the lack of corpora for prosodic studies in Catalan and Spanish. In this paper, we present a corpus intended to fill this gap. The corpus comprises two distinct data-sets, a news subcorpus and a dialogue subcorpus, the latter containing either conversational or task-oriented speech. More than 25 h were recorded by twenty eight speakers per language. Among these speakers, eight were professional (four radio news broadcasters and four advertising actors). The entire material presented here has been transcribed, aligned with the
The aim of this paper is to present a phonological description of the boundary tones in final and... more The aim of this paper is to present a phonological description of the boundary tones in final and nonfinal declarative sentences in Spanish, drawn from a read news corpus and a dialogue corpus. The final clauses tend to finish with L*L% and sometimes L+H*L%. Four different pitch configurations can be found for non-final patterns: a rise (L*H%), a fallto-mid (H*!H%), a fall-rise (H*LH%) and a sustained tone, which presents different phonetic manifestations depending on the pitch level of the previous accent (H*, !H* or L*). These findings question the validity of the traditional Sp_ToBI convention (HL%) to describe a sustained tone since it cannot account for a level pitch after !H* or L*. A new boundary tone, =%, is proposed whose feature for pitch height is underspecified. For this reason, it can adopt the values of H, !H or L, according to the pitch height of the last accent.
Revista Alicantina de Estudios Ingleses, 1999
Interferencias de la entonación del español de Canarias en la del inglés RP en enunciados interrogativos de tipo neutro: un estudio piloto
La Luz No Interrumpida Homenaje a Eugenio Padorno 2012 Isbn 978 84 7882 733 6 Pags 359 370, 2012
Acoustic phonetics and EFL teaching on CD-Rom. A pilot study
Actas Del Xxiv Congreso Internacional De Aesla Recurso Electronico Aprendizaje De Lenguas Uso Del Lenguaje Y Modelacion Cognitiva Perspectivas Aplicadas Entre Disciplinas 2007 Isbn 978 84 611 6897 2, 2007
Phonological analysis of medial focal accent in Spanish and English
Proceedings of the 22nd International Conference of Aedean Lleida 17 19 December 1998 2000 Isbn 84 8409 045 0 Pags 173 178, 2000
... por Pere Gallardo, Enric Llurda Giménez, 2000, ISBN 84-8409-045-0 , págs. 173-178; Recoge los... more ... por Pere Gallardo, Enric Llurda Giménez, 2000, ISBN 84-8409-045-0 , págs. 173-178; Recoge los contenidos presentados a: Asociación Española de Estudios Anglo-Norteamericanos. Congreso (22. 1998. Lleida). Fundación Dialnet. Acceso de usuarios registrados. ...
La formulación de la promesa en el caso de los recetarios médicos meidevales españoles
Studia Humanitatis in Honorem Antonio Cabrera Perera 2002 Isbn 84 95792 61 3 Pags 353 364, 2002
The phonological representation of edge tones in Spanish alternative questions
... Finally, Sosa (1999), who puts forward a cross-dialectal comparison of Spanish, and consequen... more ... Finally, Sosa (1999), who puts forward a cross-dialectal comparison of Spanish, and consequently, a wide range of data, regards T-as ... H-or H%) is most descriptively and explanatorily adequate for the end of the first disjunct in alternative interrogatives in Spanish, in the ...
La representación fonológica del tono
Vector Plus Miscelanea Cientifico Cultural, 1996
Atlas Multimedia de prosodia del Espacio Románico en Canarias
ABSTRACT Póster