Intonation features of the expression of emotions in Spanish: preliminary study for a prosody assessment procedure

Abstract

This study aimed to find out what intonation features reliably represent the emotions of liking as opposed to disliking in the Spanish language, with a view to designing a prosody assessment procedure for use with children with speech and language disorders. 18 intonationally different prosodic realisations (tokens) of one word (lim_n) were recorded by one native Spanish speaker. The tokens were deemed representative of two categories of emotion: liking or disliking of the taste lemon. 30 native Spanish speakers assigned them to the two categories and rated their expressiveness on a six-point scale. For all tokens except two, agreement between judges as to category was highly significant, some tokens attracting 100% agreement. The intonation contours most related to expressiveness levels were: for liking, an inverted U form contour with exaggerated pitch peak within the tonic syllable; and for disliking, a flat melodic contour with a slight fall.