Abstract
This chapter aims to explore an aspect of the interface between prosody and pragmatics by examining the contribution of intonation to the process of utterance interpretation in spontaneous speech. Buenos Aires Spanish has three nuclear pitch accent + boundary tone configurations associated with declarative utterances: (a) high-falling (H+L* L%); (b) low (L* L%); (c) rising-falling (L+H*+L L%). All three can be used to assert a given state of affairs, but each encodes a different pragmatic meaning, associated with the strength and emphasis with which the state of affairs is communicated and with the type of cognitive effect to be achieved by the utterance. The prosodic analysis is carried out using the Autosegmental-Metrical approach, and the pragmatic analysis follows Relevance Theory.

Abstract
This chapter explores some tone choices in the spontaneous speech of Buenos Aires (Argentina) Spanish and attempts to account for them in procedural terms along the lines suggested by Relevance Theory (Wilson and Wharton, 2006). In particular, it analyses stretches of discourse beyond individual tone units, and tries to show how nuclear tone and boundary tone choices and pitch range management affect the interpretation of those tone units in terms of their function in spoken discourse, and how participants in a conversation organize information to indicate dependence, continuity and discontinuity (House, 2006). More generally, it aims to show that these tone choices encode specific instructions to guide the hearer to the most relevant interpretation of discourse by reducing the processing effort necessary to achieve the desired cognitive effects, and therefore argues for a procedural account of intonation. The prosodic analysis is carried out in the Autosegmental-Metrical framework (Pierrehumbert, 1980; Ladd, 1996) using its application to the study of Spanish intonation known as the Tone and Break Indices (Sp-ToBI) transcription system (Beckman et al., 2002; Hualde, 2003; Sosa, 2003; Estebas-Villaplana and Prieto, 2008), also used specifically in the study of Buenos Aires Spanish (Gabriel et al., 2010a). The results of the analysis suggest that relevance is pursued both at a local and at a global level, and they lend support to a compositional approach to intonational meaning, in which different prosodic choices and their combinations guide pragmatic interpretation at different levels. Overall, the chapter aims to show that Relevance Theory in general, and procedural encoding in particular, offer an insightful way to deal with prosodic phenomena and their meaning.

En este trabajo se analiza la entonación como un fenómeno de interfaz entre la fonología entonativa y la pragmática. Para el análisis pragmático, se recurre a la Teoría de la Relevancia (Sperber & Wilson 1995, 2004) y su aplicación al estudio del fenómeno prosódico (Wilson & Wharton 2006). El análisis de la prosodia se realiza en el marco del modelo métrico-autosegmental de la entonación aplicado al análisis del español de Buenos Aires (Gabriel et al. 2010). A su vez, se considera que la entonación tiene una función procedimental, en tanto facilita el procesamiento del discurso por parte del oyente (House 2006). Se comparan las selecciones tonales de la variedad del español de Argentina, específicamente de la Patagonia, con las del inglés del sudeste de Inglaterra. El objetivo es descubrir similitudes y diferencias en los recursos prosódicos (selección del tono nuclear, tono de frontera y altura tonal) utilizados en oraciones declarativas no conclusivas. Las diferencias halladas en relación con el tipo y forma de realización de las configuraciones tonales servirían como punto de partida para el análisis de las posibles dificultades que hablantes del inglés como segunda lengua puedan encontrar.

ABSTRACT

In this work, intonation is analysed as a phenomenon at the interface between intonational phonology and pragmatics. The pragmatic analysis is carried out in the framework of the Relevance Theory (Sperber & Wilson 1995, 2004) and its application to the study of prosodic aspects (Wilson & Wharton 2006). Prosody is studied in terms of the Autosegmental and Metrical theory based on the analysis carried out by Gabriel et al. (2010) on the Spanish of Buenos Aires. In addition, intonation is conceived of as a set of procedural instructions, in the sense that it presents the listener with instructions as to how to process the information (House 2006). Tone choices are compared between Argentinean Spanish from Patagonia and the English spoken in the southeast of England, with the purpose of finding similarities and differences in the prosodic patterns (tone choices, pitch and boundary tones) present in non-conclusive declarative sentences. The differences that have been found in terms of the type and form of tonal configurations might function as the starting point to identify possible difficulties that speakers of English as a second language may encounter.