Tonal alignment patterns in Spanish

Two speakers of Mexican Spanish read a total of 810 declarative sentences containing nine distinct target syllables with an H* accent , under dif ferent prosodic conditions (end of intonational phrase , end of intermediate phrase , and phrase-medial position) , systematically changing syllabic position in the word and distance in syllables to the next stressed syllable . The data demonstrate that models that represent F 0 peak placement as a fixed proportion of the syllable / rhyme are superseded by models that take into account intrasyllabic segmental durations (e . g ., van Santen & Hirschberg 1994) . In addition , prosodic factors such as adjacency to word , intonational and intermediate-boundaries , and stress clash , are key components in the prediction of peak location . F 0 peaks before such prosodic units tend to be placed earlier in thier syllables . Long range ef fects of those prosodic factors are statistically significant , but generally small . An examination of the timing of the entire accent gesture in these prosodic contexts demonstrates that : 1) the location of the start of the F 0 rise is fairly constant (generally at the onset of the accented syllable) ; 2) the time allocated for the rising gesture is not invariant : syllables with early peaks also have a shorter rise time (i . e ., temporal distance between the peak and the previous valley) ; and 3) the velocity of the accent rise is clearly correlated with peak delay (i . e ., temporal distance between the peak and the onset of the syllable) : accents with relatively early peaks have a steeper rising slope , and vice versa . Results from the present study represent preliminary evidence that both the segmental composition of the accented syllable and following prosodic context trigger a timing and velocity adjustment on the entire H* accent gesture in Spanish . ÷ 1995 Academic Press Limited .