Intonation and Evidentiality in Spanish Polar Interrogatives

Abstract

Three different nuclear pitch accents can be found in Castilian Spanish polar interrogatives. In addition to the ‘canonical’ low-rise pattern, there are two marked interrogative contours featuring high-rise and rise–fall pitch accents. The aim of this paper is to explain how each contour contributes to the interpretation of the utterance in which they occur. I argue that this contribution is to be sought at the semantic, not at the pragmatic-illocutionary, attitudinal-level. My proposal is that the low-rise contour is the expression of unspecified sentence polarity (corresponding to the interrogative operator), whereas the two marked contours add indications about the information source—that is, they encode evidential distinctions. The high-rise pattern indicates that the Self is the source of the information; the rise–fall tone indicates that Other is the source. The whole range of pragmatic interpretations that have been described in the literature can be easily accommodated into the present proposal as inferential developments of the encoded meaning together with contextual information. This view has implications for a theory of interrogatives, for the phonology of intonation and for the articulation of the semantics/pragmatics interface.