A geoprosotic study in four speech varieties from Trás-os-Montes

Abstract

The study we propose to present in this paper is within the ambit of the international project AMPER, Prosodic Multimedia Atlas of the Romance Space, in the continuity of other research studies in the area of geoprosody already published by us. Partial results will be presented for a contrastive analysis of the prosodic contours in four survey points located in Trás-os-Montes. The data under analysis concern four male speakers, one from each point, aged not less than 50, with elementary education. Although all speakers are Portuguese, two of the informants come from geographical contexts where Mirandese is also spoken (Miranda do Douro and Especiosa); the other two, although also from Trás-os-Montes, are not exposed to this language in their daily lives (Vinhais and Alfândega da Fé). It is our purpose to observe:

– the intonational variation present in each modality (declarative and interrogative);
– the influence of the position of the lexical stress on the prosodic stress;
– the differences in the productions of these four speakers, in order to understand whether contact with the Mirandese language may lead to different melodies.