There are boundary tones at the end of intonational phrases (IPs) and of intermediate phrases (ips), and also at the beginning of prosodic units.
The inventory of possible boundary tones is different in function of the boundary type. In Spanish, there have been found:
- 7 types of boundary tones at the end of IPs (marked with the % symbol after the tone):
- 2 with 1 target: IL% and I!H%
- 4 with 2 targets: IH%, IHL%, ILH% and IL!H%
- and 1 with 3 targets: ILHL%
- 7 types of boundary tones at the end of ips (marked with the - symbol after the tone):
- 3 with 1 target: IL-, IM- and IH-
- 3 with 2 targets: IHH-, IHL- and ILH-
- and 1 with 3 targets: ILHL-
In Sp_ToBI phrase accents are not used. There has been found no evidence for their necessity in the system to account for all tonal movement on non accented syllables.
Click a schematic contour of the Boundary tones selector above the page title to get information about boundary tones.