Declination, peak height and pitch level in declaratives and questions of south connaught irish

As South Connaught Irish typically uses the same (falling) tune type in both questions and declaratives, this paper examines whether sentence mode might be differentiated in this dialect by other aspects of the contour realization, namely declination slope, peak height and pitch level. A set of matched declaratives (DEC), whquestions (WHQ) and yes/no questions (YNQ) of two phrase lengths (with 2 and 3 accent groups) was analysed. The results indicate that sentence type is reflected in the measured f0 parameters. Compared to declaratives, WHQ exhibit markedly steeper declination slopes and somewhat higher IP-initial peaks, while YNQ raise the pitch level and the IP-initial peaks. Phrase length influences declination slope, but does not appear to affect peak height.