Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-26T00:13:24.311Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The intonation of polar questions in Italian: Where is the rise?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 March 2012

Michelina Savino
Michelina Savino*
Affiliation:
Dipartimento di Psicologia, Università di Bari, Italy & Institut für Linguistik – Phonetik, Universität zu Köln, [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Earlier studies on Standard Italian describe polar questions as being characterised by a terminal rise, as opposed to a terminal fall for statements, where a low/falling accentual movement precedes the terminal part of the contour in both sentence types. The same is generally claimed for the Northern and Central Italian varieties (including Florentine, i.e. the variety from which Standard Italian stems), whereas Southern accents are characterised by an accentual rise followed by a terminal fall, being therefore the primary cue for question in non-terminal position. However, a closer look at the existing literature on regional Italian question intonation reveals that such a geographical distribution of intonational features across Italian accents is not that clear-cut. A reason for this discrepancy might be the different speaking styles – here intended as the broad spontaneous vs. read distinction – of the spoken productions analysed. The aim of this paper is to call into question the claim that a terminal rise preceded by an accentual low/fall is the most widespread intonational feature for marking questioning across Italian accents. The goal is to provide a clearer picture of question intonation in Italian by looking at the distribution of the rise as either on terminal or non-terminal position across a large number of varieties, where speech materials have been elicited with the same methodology, and they are therefore homogeneous with respect to speaking style. Intonation analysis has been carried out on spontaneous yes–no questions extracted from the Map Task dialogues collected in the CLIPS national corpus (Corpora e Lessici di Italiano Parlato e Scritto – Corpora and Lexicons of Spoken and Written Italian) covering 15 varieties of Italian. Results of this analysis on the Northern, Central, and Southern polar questions reveals that the accentual rise prevails, and that the distribution of the rise across varieties is independent of the geography.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of the International Phonetic Association , Volume 42 , Issue 1 , April 2012 , pp. 23 - 48
Copyright
Copyright © International Phonetic Association 2012

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Agard, Frederick B. & Di Pietro, Robert J.. 1965. The sounds of English and Italian. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Albano Leoni, Federico, Paoloni, Andrea, Refice, Mario, Rinaldo, Paolo, Savino, Michelina & Sobrero, Alberto. 1998. CLIP: Corpus della Lingua Italiana Parlata [Corpus of Spoken Italian]. The 1st International Conference on Language Resources & Evaluation (LREC 1998), vol. 1, 503–506.Google Scholar
Anderson, Anne, Bader, Miles, Bard, Ellen Gurman, Boyle, Elizabeth, Doherty, Gwyneth, Garrod, Steve, Isard, Stephen, Kowtko, Jacqueline, McAllister, Jan, Miller, Jim, Sotillo, Catherine, Thompson, Henry & Weinert, Regina. 1991. The HCRC Map Task Corpus. Language and Speech 34 (4), 351–366.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Andreeva, Bistra, Koreman, Jacques & Barry, William J.. 2003. Phonatory demarcations of intonation phrases in Bulgarian. The 15th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 15), 611–614.Google Scholar
Avesani, Cinzia. 1990. A contribution to the synthesis of Italian intonation. The International Conference of Spoken Language Processing (ICLSP '90), 833–836.Google Scholar
Avesani, Cinzia. 1995. ToBIt: un sistema di trascrizione per l'intonazione italiana. Atti delle V Giornate di Studio del Gruppo di Fonetica Sperimentale dell'A.I.A. (Associazione Italiana di Acustica), 85–98.Google Scholar
Bartels, Christine. 1999. The intonation of English statements and questions: A compositional interpretation. New York: Garland.Google Scholar
Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Loporcaro, Michele. 2005. The sound pattern of Standard Italian, as compared with the varieties spoken in Florence, Milan and Rome. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35 (2), 131–151.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boersma, Paul & Weenink, David. 2001. Praat, a system for doing phonetics by computer. Glot International 5 (9/10), 341–345.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1978. Intonation across languages. In Greenberg, Joseph H. (ed.), Universals of human languages, 471–524. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Bolinger, Dwight. 1989. Intonation and its uses: Melody in grammar and discourse. London: Edward Arnold.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Canepari, Luciano. 1979. Introduzione alla fonetica. Torino: Einaudi.Google Scholar
Canepari, Luciano. 1980. Italiano standard e pronunce regionali. Padova: Cleup.Google Scholar
Canepari, Luciano. 1985. L'intonazione. Linguistica e paralinguistica. Napoli: Liguori.Google Scholar
Caputo, Maria Rosaria. 1994. L'intonazione delle domande sì/no in un campione di italiano parlato. Atti delle IV Giornate di Studio del Gruppo di Fonetica Sperimentale dell'A.I.A. (Associazione Italiana di Acustica), 9–18.Google Scholar
Carletta, Jean, Isard, Amy, Isard, Stephen, Kowtko, Jacqueline, Doherty-Sneddon, Gwyneth & Anderson, Anne. 1997. The reliability of a dialogue structure coding scheme. Computational Linguistics 23 (1), 13–32.Google Scholar
Chafe, Wallace. 1974. Language and consciousness. Language 50, 111–133.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chapallaz, Marguerite. 1979. The pronunciation of Italian: A practical introduction. London: Bell and Hyman.Google Scholar
Crocco, Claudia. 2006. Prosodic and informational aspects of polar questions in Neapolitan Italian. The 3rd International Conference on Speech Prosody 2006 (CD-ROM).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cruttenden, Alan. 1981. Falls and rises: Meanings and universals. Journal of Linguistics 17, 1–178.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Crystal, David. 1969. Prosodic systems and intonation in English. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
De Dominicis, Amedeo. 2002. Assertive e interrogative a Bologna e a Roma. Atti delle XII Giornate di Studio del Gruppo di Fonetica Sperimentale dell'A.I.A. (Associazione Italiana di Acustica), 129–136.Google Scholar
De Mauro, Tullio. 1963. Storia linguistica dell'Italia unita. Bari: Laterza.Google Scholar
D'Eugenio, Antonio. 1982. Major problems of English phonology: With special reference to Italian-speaking learners. Foggia: Atlantica.Google Scholar
D'Imperio, Mariapaola. 1999. Tonal structure and pitch targets in Italian focus constituents. The 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 14), vol. 3, 1757–1760.Google Scholar
D'Imperio, Mariapaola. 2000. The role of perception in defining tonal targets and their alignment. Ph.D. dissertation, The Ohio State University.Google Scholar
D'Imperio, Mariapaola. 2001a. Tonal alignment, scaling and slope in Italian question and statement tunes. Eurospeech 2001, vol. 1, 99–102.Google Scholar
D'Imperio, Mariapaola. 2001b. Focus and tonal structure in Neapolitan Italian. Speech Communication 33, 339–356.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'Imperio, Mariapaola. 2002. Italian intonation: An overview and some questions. Probus 14, 37–49.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
D'Imperio, Mariapaola & House, David. 1997. Perception of question and statement in Neapolitan Italian. Eurospeech 1997, vol. 1, 1251–1254.Google Scholar
Endo, Reiko & Bertinetto, Pier Marco. 1997. Aspetti dell'intonazione in alcune varietà dell'italiano. Atti delle VII Giornate di Studio del Gruppo di Fonetica Sperimentale dell'A.I.A. (Associazione Italiana di Acustica), 27–49.Google Scholar
Geluykens, Ronald. 1988. On the myth of rising intonation in polar questions. Journal of Pragmatics 12, 467–485.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Gili Fivela, Barbara. 2002. L'intonazione nella varietà pisana di italiano: analisi delle caratteristiche principali. Atti delle XII Giornate di Studio del Gruppo di Fonetica Sperimentale dell'A.I.A. (Associazione Italiana di Acustica), 103–111.Google Scholar
Gili Fivela, Barbara. 2004. The phonetics and phonology of intonation: The case of Pisa Italian. Ph.D. dissertation, Scuola Normale Superiore di Pisa.Google Scholar
Gili Fivela, Barbara. 2008. Intonation in production and perception: The case of Pisa Italian. Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso.Google Scholar
Giordano, Rosa. 2006. The intonation of polar questions in two central varieties of Italian. The 3rd International Conference on Speech Prosody 2006 (CD-ROM).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grice, Martine. 1991. The intonation of interrogation of two varieties of Sicilian Italian. The 12th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 12), vol. 5, 210–213.Google Scholar
Grice, Martine. 1995. The intonation of interrogation in Palermo Italian: Implication for intonation theory. Tübingen: Niemeyer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grice, Martine, D'Imperio, Mariapaola, Savino, Michelina & Avesani, Cinzia. 2005. Strategies for intonation labelling across varieties of Italian. In Jun, Sun-Ah (ed.), Prosodic typology: The phonology of intonation and phrasing, 362–389. New York: Oxford University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grice, Martine & Savino, Michelina. 1995. Low tone versus ‘sag’ in Bari Italian intonation: A perceptual experiment. The 13th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 13), vol. 3, 648–651.Google Scholar
Grice, Martine & Savino, Michelina. 1997. Can pitch accent type convey information status in yes−no questions? Workshop sponsored by the ACL, Concept-to-Speech Generation Systems, 29–38.Google Scholar
Grice, Martine & Savino, Michelina. 2003a. Map Tasks in Italian: Asking questions about given, accessible and new information. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 2, 153–180.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Grice, Martine & Savino, Michelina. 2003b. Question type and information structure in Italian. International Workshop Prosodic Interfaces, 117–122.Google Scholar
Grice, Martine & Savino, Michelina. 2004. Information structure and questions: Evidence from task-oriented dialogues in a variety of Italian. In Gilles, Peter & Peters, Jörg (eds.), Regional variation in intonation, 161–187. Tübingen: Niemeyer.Google Scholar
Grice, Martine, Savino, Michelina & Refice, Mario. 1997. The intonation of questions in Bari Italian: Do speakers replicate their spontaneous speech when reading? PHONUS 3, 1–7. [Institut für Phonetik, Universität des Saarlandes, Saarbrücken.]Google Scholar
Gussenhoven, Carlos. 2004. The phonology of tone and intonation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirschberg, Julia. 1995. Prosodic and other acoustic cues to speaking style in spontaneous and read speech. The 13th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 13), 36–43.Google Scholar
Hirschberg, Julia. 2000. A corpus-based approach to the study of speaking styles. In Horne, Merle (ed.), Prosody: Theory and experiment, 335–350. Dordrecht: Kluwer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hirschberg, Julia. 2006. Pragmatics and intonation. In Horn, Laurence & Ward, Gregory (eds.), Handbook of pragmatics, 515–537. Oxford: Blackwell.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Interlandi, Grazia. 2003. L'intonazione delle interrogative polari nell'italiano parlato a Torino: tra varietà regionale e nuova koiné. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pavia.Google Scholar
Interlandi, Grazia & Romano, Antonio. 2003. Quale intonazione per il torinese? Atti delle XII Giornate di Studio del Gruppo di Fonetica Sperimentale dell'A.I.A. (Associazione Italiana di Acustica), 117–122.Google Scholar
Kügler, Frank. 2003. Do we know the answer? Variation in yes−no question intonation. In Fisher, Susanne, van den Vijver, Ruben & Vogel, Ralf (eds.), Experimental studies in linguistics I (Linguistics in Potsdam 21), 9–29.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert. 1978. The structure of intonational meaning. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.Google Scholar
Ladd, D. Robert. 1996. Intonational phonology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Lepschy, Laura & Lepschy, Giulio. 1993. La lingua italiana. Storia, varietà dell'uso, grammatica. Milano: Bompiani.Google Scholar
Magno Caldognetto, Emanuela, Ferrero, Franco, Lavagnoli, C. & Vagges, Kyriaki. 1978. F0 contours of statements, yes−no questions and wh-questions of two regional varieties of Italian. Journal of Italian Linguistics 3, 57–68.Google Scholar
Marotta, Giovanna & Sardelli, Elena. 2009. Prosodiatopia: Parametri prosodici per un modello di riconoscimento diatopico. Atti del XL Congresso Internazionale di Studi della Società di Linguistica Italiana, 411–435.Google Scholar
Marotta, Giovanna & Sorianello, Patrizia. 1999. Question intonation in Sienese Italian. The 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 14), vol. 2, 1161–1164.Google Scholar
Marotta, Giovanna & Sorianello, Patrizia. 2001. La teoria autosegmentale nell'analisi dell'intonazione interrogativa di due varietà di italiano toscano (Lucca e Pisa). Atti del XXXIII Congresso Internazionale di Studi della Società di Linguistica Italiana, 177–204.Google Scholar
Maturi, Pietro. 1988. L'intonazione delle frasi dichiarative ed interrogative nella varietà napoletana dell'italiano. Rivista Italiana di Acustica XII (1), 13–30.Google Scholar
Ohala, John J. 1983. Cross-language use of pitch: An ethological view. Phonetica 40, 1–18.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ohala, John J. 1984. An ethological perspective on common cross-language utilization of F0 of voice. Phonetica 41, 1–16.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Pierrehumbert, Janet & Hirschberg, Julia. 1990. The meaning of intonational contours in the interpretation of discourse. In Cohen, Philip R., Morgan, Jerry & Pollack, Martha E. (eds.), Intentions in communication, 271–309. Cambridge MA: MIT Press.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Quazza, Silvia, Salza, Pier Luigi, Sandri, Stefano & Spini, Alberto. 1993. Prosodic control in a text-to-speech system for Italian. ESCA Workshop on Prosody, 78–81.Google Scholar
Refice, Mario, Savino, Michelina, Altieri, Marco & Altieri, Roberto. 2000. SegWin: A tool for segmenting, annotating and controlling the creation of a database of spoken Italian varieties. The 2nd International Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC 2000), vol. 3, 1531–1536.Google Scholar
Refice, Mario, Savino, Michelina & Grice, Martine. 1997. A contribution to the estimation of naturalness in the intonation of Italian spontaneous speech. Eurospeech 1997, vol. 2, 783–786.Google Scholar
Sardelli, Elena & Marotta, Giovanna. 2007. Prosodic parameters for the detection of regional varieties in Italian. The 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 16), 1281–1284.Google Scholar
Savino, Michelina. 1997. Il ruolo dell'intonazione nell'interazione comunicativa. Analisi strumentale delle domande polari in un corpus di dialoghi spontanei (varietà di Bari). Ph.D. dissertation, University of Bari & Polytechnics of Bari.Google Scholar
Savino, Michelina 2000. Descrizione autosegmentale-metrica di alcune tipologie intonative dell'italiano di Bari. In Burr, Elizabeth (ed.), 2006, Tradizione & Innovazione. Linguistica e Filologia Italiana alle soglie del nuovo millennio, Atti del VI Convegno Internazionale della SILFI (Società Internazionale di Linguistica e Filologia Italiana), 163–178. Firenze: Cesati. [Original 2000 conference presentation published in the conference proceedings in 2006.]Google Scholar
Savino, Michelina. 2006. Strategie prosodiche di turnazione in dialoghi italiani Map Task. Atti del VI Convegno Nazionale dell'AItLA (Associazione Italiana di Linguistica Applicata), 303–330.Google Scholar
Savino, Michelina. 2007. Intonation, accent and personal traits. In Esposito, Anna, Bratanić, Maja, Keller, Eric & Marinaro, Maria (eds.), Fundamentals of verbal and nonverbal communication and the biometric issue (NATO Security through Science Series), 149–160. Amsterdam: IOS Press.Google Scholar
Savino, Michelina. 2009. Intonational features for identifying regional accents of Italian. Interspeech 2009, 2423–2426.Google Scholar
Savino, Michelina & Grice, Martine. 2007. The role of pitch range in realising pragmatic contrasts: The case of two question types in Italian. The 16th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 16), 1037–1040.Google Scholar
Savino, Michelina & Grice, Martine. 2011. The perception of negative bias in Bari Italian questions. In Frota, Sonia, Elodierta, Gorka & Prieto, Pilar (eds.), Prosodic categories: Production, perception and comprehension (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 82), 187–206. Dordrecht: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Savino, Michelina & Refice, Mario. 1996. L'intonazione dell'italiano di Bari nel parlato letto e in quello spontaneo. Atti delle VII Giornate di Studio del Gruppo di Fonetica Sperimentale dell'A.I.A. (Associazione Italiana di Acustica), 79–88.Google Scholar
Sobrero, Alberto & Tempesta, Immacolata. 2006. Definizione delle caratteristiche formali del corpus: informatori, località. CLIPS document CLIPS/W1ai/DCC/001/v003, www.clips.unina.it (retrieved 10 November 2008).Google Scholar
Sorianello, Patrizia. 2001. Modelli intonativi dell'interrogazione in una varietà di italiano meridionale (Cosenza). Rivista Italiana di Dialettologia 25, 85–108.Google Scholar
Tosi, Arturo. 2001. Language and society in a changing Italy. Clevendon: Multilingual Matters.Google Scholar
Venditti, Jennifer, Hirschberg, Julia & Liscombe, Jackson. 2006. Intonational cues to student questions in tutoring dialogues. Interspeech 2006, 549–552.Google Scholar