Pitch downtrend in Spanish

In this study, the scaling of peak fundamental frequency (f₀) values in Mexican Spanish downstepping contours is examined as a function of the following linguistic factors: (1) phrasal length; (2) temporal distance between pitch accents; (3) phrasal position; and (4) f₀ value of preceding peak. The motivation for this study stems from contradictory claims in the literature regarding whether downtrend is governed by local or global factors. Three speakers of Mexican Spanish read a total of 540 declarative utterances (2304 target pitch accents) of varying length (from two to five pitch accents) and varying distance between H* pitch accents (from two to three intervening unstressed syllables). The data reveal that the f₀ value of the previous peak (as opposed to phrasal position) is the most important predictor of peak height. In our data, between 65 and 80% of the variance of the data is predicted by exclusively using a local downstep ratio or constant reduction in the previous peak's pitch value. Neither phrasal length nor distance between adjacent pitch accents has a significant effect on the height of a given f₀ peak. Utterance-final peaks are best predicted by using a particular ratio of decay (higher than the downstep ratio) and a phrasal length factor: the use of the latter factor reflects a tendency for final peaks in longer utterances to remain at a relatively high f₀ level.