Sobre alguns contrastos fonològics en l'entonació del català

The main goal of this article is to provide evidence in favor of the phonological character of some intonational contrasts in Catalan. First, the article shows that tonal alignment differences with respect to metrically strong positions are crucial for the distinction between a yes-no question and a wh-question (cf. "¿Que l’ha llogada?" vs. "¿Qui l’ha llogada?") and between a command and a request ("¡Vine!" vs. "¡Vine!") in Central Catalan. Second, the article reports the major results from the application of the Categorical Perception Paradigm to a pitch height contrast in Majorcan Catalan (Vanrell 2006a). Experimental resuls show that a small variation in the pitch height of the pretonic …