1 Peak F0 downtrends in Central Catalan neutral declaratives Eva Estebas-Vilaplana Abstract This paper examines peak fundamental frequency (F0) downtrends in Central Catalan sentences produced with a neutral declarative intonation. The tendency of an F0 decline over the course of an utterance is a well-known property of speech. However, the interpretation of such a downtrend varies in the literature. Whereas sometimes the downward trend of pitch has been analysed as a global effect, conceived as a component of the overall contour, at other times it has been treated as a local, phonologically controlled mechanism, which affects accents individually and in relation to previous accents. In order to determine the nature of F0 peak downtrends in Central Catalan, 192 sentences produced by four speakers were analysed. The results suggest that peak (or H(igh) accent) downtrends in Central Catalan are better explained as a linguistically controlled accent-by-accent downstep than as a global time-dependent declination. Thus, peak height in Central Catalan can be accurately predicted as a constant proportion of the height of the previous peak, except for the utterance-final H which undergoes a greater amount of lowering than that expected by the downstep rule. Final H values are better explained by means of a lowering constant, which is higher than the downstep ratio. 1 Introduction One of the most controversial issues in the study of intonation is the interpretation or modelling of declination. Declination has been described as the tendency of fundamental frequency to gradually lower over the course of an utterance. Although this pitch downtrend 1 has been widely studied and recognised in many languages, researchers still disagree on its nature. Two major views have been followed in the description of F0 downtrends, referred to by among others Ladd (1983) and Nolan (1995) as the Contour Interaction model and the Tone Sequence model (henceforth CI 1 Pitch is the perceptual correlate of fundamental frequency (F0), which is the acoustic correlate of the repetition rate of vocal fold vibration. In this paper, the terms "pitch" and "F0" are used interchangeably.