Prosodic correlates of mirative and new information focus in Spanish wh-in-situ questions

This paper examines the prosodic correlates of focus in two types of wh-in-situ
questions in Spanish: information-seeking (INF), and echo-surprise (SUR). We
hypothesize that they will have different intonational properties since the former are
associated with new-information focus, while the latter are compatible with mira-
tive focus since they express unexpectedness and surprise (Badan & Crocco 2019).
A total of 280 sentences from a contextualized elicitation task were analyzed in
Praat following SpToBI conventions. Results show that INF and SUR have similar
melodic contours, involving a rise through the first pre-nuclear accent, declination,
and a steep final rise on the wh-phrase. However, SUR questions have a higher
nuclear peak and larger focal tonal range than INF questions. Our results show clear
scaling differences in the nuclear configuration consistent with a difference
between new-information and mirative focus, which can be phonologically analyzed
as nuclear upstep in SUR (L+¡H*), unlike in INF (L+H*).