LAUSR

The question of whether intonation contours directly signal meaning is an old one. We revisit this question using vocatives in Colombian Spanish (Bogotá). We recorded speakers' productions in three pragmatic conditions – greeting, confirmation-seeking, and reprimand – and compared proper names (vocatives) to situation-specific one-word utterances, such as hola 'hello' (non-vocatives). Intonational analyses showed no direct one-to-one correspondence between the pragmatic conditions and intonation contours: (a) for vocatives, e.g., a rising–falling contour occurred in both greetings and reprimands, (b) for non-vocatives, e.g., a step-down contour (a.k.a. calling contour) occurred in both greeting and confirmationseeking conditions. Looking beyond intonation to consider other phonetic variables – spectral tilt, duration, alignment of tonal targets, f0-range, f0-slope – the results showed that the intonation contours that occurred in more than one pragmatic condition differed in phonetic realisation: e.g., rising–falling vocatives showed differences in f0-range of the rise and spectral tilt. However, the corresponding non-vocatives did not show the same differences. Furthermore, vocatives in greeting contexts were realised differently than non-vocatives in greeting contexts. In sum, the pragmatic condition affects the prosodic realisation of vocatives, but the relationship is complex. The results are discussed in the light of prosodic