Entonación y ambigüedad. Determinante vs. intensificador adverbial

Abstract

In this article we deal with the intonational exponence of a closed grammatical system of English. The two terms of the system contain identical lexical strings whose syntactic description is assigned solely by the intonational subsystem known as tonicity. The alternative placement of the intonational nucleus on one word or another of the string causes the nucleus-bearing word to be categorised as either a quantifier or an adverbial intensifier. Mapping the two English sentences onto the Spanish and Catalan equivalents, we find that intonation has no longer a role, and the contrasting structural descriptions of the sentences obtained is determined by the different word order of the strings. We finish with a note on the pedagogical implications stemming fron our analysis as regards the teaching of English intonation to both Spanish and Catalan students.