Sound variability of Czech interrogative sentences in spontaneous speech

This work undertakes the problems of intonation in Czech. The aim of this research is to analyse and describe phonetic variability of Czech interrogative sentences, particularly in spontaneous speech. The intonation fulfils certain linguistic functions in Czech. Structures of the basic patterns of intonation (melodeme) are described and standardized, but aspects of spontaneous and dialogic utterances have not been described sufficiently yet. Our research deal with variability, occurrence and behaviour of basic types of questions (yes-no and wh-questions) and their modifications in spontaneous speech, which are given by context and situation or given by the difference between semantic and formal aspects. It was found yes-no questions (with all their modifications) to be the most frequented questions in spontaneous dialogues of our type. We also found semantic modifications to have the same distribution as the standard ones whereas formal congruent types behave unlikely. The research is based on spontaneous task-oriented dialogues and read text of dialogical character. We focuse on detail description of concrete tonal progression of melodic contour, we also take into account broader melodic context in the case of basic types of questions. We analyse both types oftext in the same manner, then the comparison is..