THE PROSODIC COMPETENCE OF YOUNG BASQUE BILINGUALS IN STORYTELLING: TONAL PEAKS AND BOUNDARY TONES

Abstract

In the study of the prosody of the Basque language, we have mainly worked with isolated sentences or read texts, but not with spontaneous narrative texts. This is mainly due to the fact that it is not a standardised language and the accent, depending on the diatopic variety to which it belongs, is not always placed on the same syllable. This work, based on the theory of prosodic hierarchy and using autosegmental metrical notation, aims to specify the tonal peaks and boundary tones of the prosodic groups used in the spontaneous narration of a traditional tale. Enunciative sentences with prosodic group between 5 and 10 syllables were analysed. The main conclusion of this work is that in most of the structures analysed the tonal summit is located in the second sentence of the prosodic group, and the border tone tends to be ascending, but it cannot be generalised.