Prosodic Differences Between Declaratives and Polar Questions In Fataluku

The primary goal of the present study is to describe the basic prosodic differences between declaratives and polar questions in Fataluku, an underdocumented Papuan language spoken in the island nation of East Timor. Two robust prosodic differences between statements and questions are observed, namely, the duration of the final vowel and the intonational tune at the right margin of the sentence. Declaratives have a shorter final vowel that carries a low f0, while questions have a much longer final vowel that has a rising-falling f0 pattern. I postulate a L% boundary tone for declaratives and a L+HL% boundary tone for questions, proposing that the final syllables of questions are lengthened to accommodate the more complex sequence of final tones.