As interrogativas do português brasileiro falado em Minas Gerais e sua entonação

Abstract

This paper deals with the characterization of the melodic patterns of absolute interrogative utterances in Minas Gerais State (Brazil). This research has been made based on data from spontaneous speech settings, 32 speakers of different gender, age and education, through the Melodic Analysis of Speech (Cantero 2002). As a result, we found four intonation patterns: Rising Final Inflection (30%~60%), Rising (<30%) ~ Falling (<-30%) Final Inflection, High nucleus Final Inflection and Rising-falling Final Inflection (Araújo 2014). These patterns, established through the acoustic analysis of 76 yes/no questions, were compared with interrogatives retrieved in different areas of Brazil.