Variedades geoprosódicas del español la entonación de zonas de Canarias y Cuba.

Abstract

This PhD dissertation includes four articles with their impact factor and a series of works carried out during the pre-doctoral period of the author. These papers study different aspects of the intonation in areas from the Canary Islands and Cuba. The majority of compiled studies are based on the methodological guidelines of the AMPER macro project, from the types of corpus studied to the acoustic analysis programs, and even the methods of comparison of the different linguistic areas. However, new techniques for studying data had been added to the original methodology, such as the phonetic or phonological labeling of FO curves, the use of thresholds to test the perceptive relevance of the obtained data or certain strategies to carry out applied studies beyond the traditional description of intonation in different varieties, such as the conduction of diverse types of perceptual tests. After the General Introduction, where the four assessable works are presented highlighting their thematic unity, in section 1.2. are listed the antecedents and the state of the art of the intonation and prosody studies, taking into account especially those referring to the Cuban and Canarian varieties of Spanish. This section is followed by the Objectives chapter (section 2.), already outlined in the PhD dissertation project, that specifies which of the included papers fulfill all or part of each goal proposed. The description of the Methodology in section 4. is fundamental in a PhD thesis that studies and collects data of multiple parameters in different types of corpus taking into account variables such as gender or level of studies and that includes a great amount of measurements of acoustic parameters and statistical results. At this point we detail the different types of software and techniques used to describe and characterize the intonational patterns obtained from the speakers in the areas under study. In this very section we also describe the tools and procedures to obtain information from the listeners through the conducted perception tests. Sections 5. and 6. compose the main core of the work and contain the compendium of evaluable papers as they were published, each one preceded by their relevant evaluation, impact factor and databases were they are indexed. In addition,we decided to include other works of consideration that exceed the regulations to be evaluable but that might help to define the solidity of the PhD candidate research activity. This determination is fundamented in the lack of differentiation related to the methodology used or the objectives pursued in these studies against the publications that do fulfill the normative. Subsequently, the general results of the works included are summarized in section 7. considering the objectives proposed in section 2. and relating them to the relevant data obtained in each study presented. Afterwards a discussion (section 8.) of some of the key points of the dissertation is proposed. In this section we tried to confront all the data obtained during the predoctoral period of the author according to different variables and formulate them to illustrate more clearly all the knowledge obtained about the intonation of the Canarian and Cuban speakers in the different types of corpora considered, as well as to evaluate the applicability of these results to different fields. The display, comparison and review of all the data collected culminates in the final Conclusions (section 9.), which are followed by a list of future works under the same line of research waiting to be completed. The writing of this thesis conclude with the section of acknowledgments, where all the people and entities that have facilitated the research work of the author are referenced. Finally, the bibliography cited in the writing of the dissertation is presented, which is fundamental in this line of research and differs in part from the references contained in each summarized paper.