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There are many procedures to describe F0 contours in acoustic-phonetic terms. Garrido’s (1996, 2001, 2010) and z-score normalization systems have the advantage that they are automatic procedures. Therefore, this paper aims at analyzing both systems in order to determine the possible future application for the analysis of Spanish as a Foreign Language spoken by Brazilians (SFL). To do so, we analyze the melodic curves in declaratives, yes-no questions and wh-questions in Madrid Spanish, in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) spoken in the city of São Paulo and finally, in SFL. The validity of both systems was tested through a perception test with 10 Brazilian and 10 Spanish listeners. Listeners rated the degree of similarity between the signals with original intonation and signals with stylized F0 contours. The results showed that Garrido’s automatic stylization method is really able to perceptually create representations equivalent to the original ones in Spanish, BP and SFL and also better than those obtained with the procedure based on z-score normalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following research deals with the intonation of utterances in Chilean Spanish with stress clashes: the presence of two or more successive stressed syllables. In order to do this, and from the perspective of acoustic analysis, an experiment was devised to observe the frequency of use of each of the seven main stress clash management strategies reported in the literature (Prieto et al., 1995; Almeida, 2001). The results support the notion of tonal peaks as targets (Prieto, 2003) and the expected use of a single tonal peak in contexts of stress clash. They also establish some unexpected relationships between certain sets of the aforementioned strategies; as well as between utterances with different prosodic patterns. Based on the results of this investigation, this paper also attempts to propose a tentative categorization of stress clash management strategies in order to improve the current understanding of stress in Spanish and to facilitate future research in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]