A atribuição de acentos tonais em compostos no Português do Brasil

Abstract

We investigate tonal association within branching prosodic word groups (PWG) (e.g. macro-endividamento), that is constituents that dominate more than one prosodic word (PW) but display a phonology distinct from phonological phrases (Vigário, 2009; to appear). Inspecting the F0 contours of 180 recorded sentences with branching and non-branching PWGs in various positions and with varying size, we conclude that the internal members of branching PWGs behave differently from PWs within non-branching PWGs: they are assigned significantly less pitch accents, and, contrary to what happens with non-branching PWGs (e.g. julgava), pitch assignment is dependent on the length of PWG internal PWs.