Analysis of the Auditory Perception of Declarative and Interrogative Modality in the Spanish Spoken in Medellin

Abstract

This work subjects the re-synthesized intonational contours of declarative and absolute interrogative sentences uttered by Medellin residents to a perceptual analysis by 67 participants from the same locality. The perception of the modality is analyzed based on the sex of the speaker and the listener, as well as on the accentual typologies, considering both accuracy rates and reaction times. The results show that Medellin residents identify declarative and interrogative sentences with over 65 % accuracy. In general, accuracy was higher in declaratives than in interrogatives, but reaction times showed the opposite pattern. Specifically, declarative sentences with proparoxytone accentual typology and interrogative sentences with paroxytone accentual typology are better perceived than those with the other typologies. Likewise, female voices, in contrast to male voices, are associated with increased perceptual performance in the interrogative modality.