Variation in Tone and Gesture within Language

Abstract

The present research focuses on the relation between tone and gesture across varieties of the same language, European Portuguese (EP). Three questions are addressed: (i) whether EP varieties use different visual cues while producing different sentence types/pragmatic meanings, (ii) if there is a relation between intonational variation and variability (if any) of visual cues, and (iii) if each linguistic factor involved can predict the type of visual cues used. Two sentence types (statements/yes-no questions) and pragmatic meanings (broad/narrow focus) were examined in four varieties of EP. Results show that visual cues, like intonation, may vary across varieties and sentence types/pragmatic meanings. Furthermore, sentence type and pragmatic meaning are good predictors of how visual cues are time-aligned with intonation, in contrast with language variety. Consequently, we hypothesize that visual cues might play an important role in discriminating sentence types/pragmatic meanings, especially in the absence of tonal contrasts.