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The prosody of other-repetition in Italian: A system of tunes

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  17 July 2020

Giovanni Rossi Open the ORCID record for Giovanni Rossi [Opens in a new window]
Giovanni Rossi*
Affiliation:
University of California, Los Angeles, USA University of Helsinki, Finland
*
Address for correspondence: Giovanni Rossi, University of California, Los Angeles, Department of Sociology, 375 Portola Plaza, 264 Haines Hall, Los Angeles, CA90095-1551, USA, [email protected]
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Abstract

As part of the project reported on in this special issue, the present study provides an overview of the types of action accomplished by other-repetition in Italian, with particular reference to the variety of the language spoken in the northeastern province of Trento. The analysis surveys actions within the domain of initiating repair, actions that extend beyond initiating repair, and actions that are alternative to initiating repair. Pitch contour emerges as a central design feature of other-repetition in Italian, with six nuclear contours associated with distinct types of action, sequential trajectories, and response patterns. The study also documents the interplay of pitch contour with other prosodic features (pitch span and register) and visible behavior (head nods, eyebrow movements). (Repetition, conversation, prosody, intonation, action, Italian)*

Type
Articles
Information
Language in Society , Volume 49 , Special Issue 4: Other-Repetition in Conversation across Languages , September 2020 , pp. 619 - 652
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s) 2020. Published by Cambridge University Press

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Footnotes

*

I am grateful to Rasmus Persson, Betty Couper-Kuhlen, Jack Sidnell, and Francisco Torreira for their comments and input at various stages of this study. I also benefited from conversations with Gene Lerner, Richard Ogden, Geoff Raymond, and Verónica Gonzáles Temer, and from the feedback I received from members of the LISO unit at the University of California, Santa Barbara on a presentation of this work. Any remaining errors and infelicities are my own. Finally, I wish to thank Susan Ehrlich for her patience and support during the writing of this article and the completion of the special issue. This research was supported by the Finnish Center of Excellence in Research on Intersubjectivity in Interaction directed by Marja-Leena Sorjonen (Academy of Finland grant # 284595).

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