ABSTRACT

This chapter summarizes the current state of the research about Spanish intonation and aims at pointing out the most relevant issues and challenges in this research field. The first section of the chapter contains an overview of the linguistic functions of intonation in Spanish, as well as an explanation of some basic concepts. The second section comprises a summary of the most important advances in Spanish intonation research in the past few decades. The third section presents a panorama of the main research issues that are currently being investigated and will probably gain momentum over the next few years, among which we find the adoption of a universally accepted coding system for transcribing Spanish intonation, as well as the proper integration of intonation into other areas of linguistic inquiry such as syntax and pragmatics.