The location

Geographically, Pescara is located in mid-eastern Italy.

However, having been part of the Kingdom of Naples, it shares the cultural and linguistic heritage of Southern Italy.

Goals

• To describe the intonation system of the variety of Italian spoken in Pescara (Abruzzi, Eastern Italy).

•To set up the inventory of nuclear pitch accents and boundary tones for this variety according to the ToBI labelling conventions.

•To describe the intonation system of the local Romance dialect spokenin Pescara.

•To set up the inventory of nuclear pitch accents and boundary tones for this language according to the ToBI labelling conventions.

•To analyze the prosodic mutual influence between the two languages.

•To test to what extent the native (Pescara dialect) intonation characteristics (substratum characteristics) pass through to Italian.

The Italian sociolinguistic

distributionWritten Oral

(segmental level)

Surasegmental

level

Italian (Standard,

correct, ideal)

• • Does not exist

Italian (actual) • • • • • …. • • • • • …. •

Italian-dialect

pidginization

• • • • …. •

(Chat)

• • • • …. • • • • • …. •

(?)

Dialect • • • • …. •

M F R N …. Pilan lorence ome aples escara

(Chat?)

• • • • …. •

M F R N …. P

• • • • …. •

M F R N …. P

What is influence of substratum?The case of “raddoppiamento fonosintattico”

Oral (segmental level)

Italian (Standard,

correct, ideal)

Non lo vuoi

dire?

Sono caduto da lì/da là

Pescara Italian No „llo vuoi

dire?

Sono caduto/cascato da llì/da llà

Italian-dialect

pidginization in

Pescara

No „llo vuoi dì? So’ ccascato da ssà

Pescara Dialect Nnì vu dicƏ?

Ni li vu dicƏ?

So cascatƏ da ssà

Things to pay attention to:

-Not all Pescara Italian peculiarities come from substratum

-Substratum is not only current substratum

-Not all substratum influence is by similarity

ToBI analyses of Italian intonation

•We take into account previous ToBI analyses of Italian, for the southern varieties spoken in Naples (D'Imperio, 1997 and 1999, Crocco, 2006), Bari (Savino, 1997, Grice, 1997), Palermo (Grice, 1995), Cosenza (Sorianello, 1994-1995, 2001, Sorianello, in print), Catanzaro (Sardelli and Marotta, 2007), central varieties such as those spoken in Pisa (Gili Fivela, 2003), Siena (Marotta-Sorianello, 1999), Firenze (Avesani, 1995, Avesani-Hirschberg, 1997), Roma (Giordano, 2005, 2006, Sardelli, 2006, Sardelliand Marotta, 2007), Perugia (Giordano, 2006) an northern varieties such as Milan (Sardelli, 2006) and Turin (Besana, 1999).

• We take into account a recent ToBI-Italian general proposal that integrates the analysis of different dialects of Italian (e.g., Gili-Fivela et al. 2010).

•We also consider the ToBI analysis of those varieties that are genetically more related to Pescara Italian like Neapolitan Italian (D’Imperio 1997, Crocco, 2006), and Bari Italian (Savino 1997), as well as those which are geographically closer, like Rome Italian (Giordano, 2006).

The corpus• The elicitation of the data was done through an established survey based on that proposed by Prieto (2001) and re-adapted to Standard Italian by the group coordinated by Barbara Gili-Fivela. The same survey has to be translated and readapted to the dialect (only oral version).

•The survey contains 57 situations that are designed to evoke everyday situations by presenting the subject with a series of situations. It contains a variety of sentence-types (statements, yes-no questions, wh-questions, imperatives) that convey different pragmatic meanings (incredulity, confirmation, obviousness, etc.)

•For each speaker, the survey was presented twice. In the first presentation, the interviewer was reading the situations and the subjects were answering first in a spontaneous way and second by reading the proposed response. In the second presentations, subjects read the target situation and the response was given both spontaneously and by reading.

Speakers

• Seven female and six male L1-speakers of Pescara Italian were interviewed. Eight of these speakers aged between 23 and 37, and five of them between 60 and 75.

•A total of 2914 utterances were elicited: 57 situations x 13 speakers x 4 elicitation types.

•So far, we analyzed the eight young speakers and we limited ourselves to analyzing 33 target situations (the same used in other Romance varieties), for a total of 33 x 8 x 2 = 528 sentences analyzed with Praat and labelled.

Previous work on contact

Colantoni & Gurlekian, 2004: Contact of Spanish and Italian in Argentina, pre-nuclear and nuclear pitch in statements. Hypothesis:

1)Italian immigrants transfer their L1-prosodic patterns to Spanish (L2) and create their own intonational variant of Spanish

2) Spanish monolinguals “accommodate” their L1 features to this variant which reaches the status of Argentinian Spanish

Previous work on contactSimonet 2008, 2010: contact of Spanish and Catalan in Mallorca, studyon statements, on bilinguals

1) Spanish-dominant bilinguals have oneintonational strategy which they use for speakingboth Spanish and Catalan. It is still more similarto the Spanish monolingual strategy than to the Catalan monolingual strategy, but it has movedtowards the latter

2) Catalan-dominant bilinguals have twostrategies: one for speaking Catalan (similar tomonolinguals) and one significantly different forspeaking Spanish (still closer to the Catalan thanto the Spanish monolingual one, but it has movedtowards the latter)

Previous work on contact

Elordieta-Romera (submitted): contact of Spanish and Catalan in Mallorca, studyon statements and questions, on monolingualSpanish speakers having moved to Mallorca

1) In questions, Spanish monolingualsaccommodate their intonational strategy to the Catalan strategy

2) In statements, Spanish monolinguals do notaccommodate their intonational strategy to the Catalan strategy

Pescara Italian:the pitch accents

L+H*H+L* ¡H+L* H*+L

H+L*

The pitch accents: H+L*

and its (phonetic?) variant, ¡H+L*

Broad focus statement: “Beve una bibita” H+L* L% vs ¡H+L* L%

104

00

2000

4000

6000

8000

104

Freq

. (H

z)

8080

108

136

164

192

220

F0 (Hz)

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1.1

Beve una bibita

1 0 4

L+H* H+L* L%

104

00

2000

4000

6000

8000

104

Fre

q. (

Hz)

8080

104

128

152

176

200

F0 (H

z)

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.2

Beve una bibita

1 0 4

L+H* ¡H+L* L%¡H+L*

Other uses of H+L*

and specific uses of ¡H+L*

H+L*

¡H+L*

-Broad Focus Statement

-Imperative Sentence

-Last item in declarative list

-2nd tone in disjunctive question

-Surprise Y/N questions-2nd tone in Wh-question

-Answer

-Categorical

-Evident

-Narrow focus

-Confirmation seeking Y/N questions-Vocative (1st type)

The pitch accents: H*+L

104

00

2000

4000

6000

8000

104

Fre

q.

(Hz)

5050

100

150

200

250

300

F0

(Hz)

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6

No! Vorrei dei limoni!

4 1 0 4

H+L* L% L+H* H*+L

104

00

2000

4000

6000

8000

104

Fre

q.

(Hz)

150150

190

230

270

310

350

F0

(Hz)

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.2

Avete dei mandarini?

1 0 4

H*+L H%H*+L

Information seeking yes/no question: “Avete dei mandaRIni?”

(“Have you got tangerines?”) H*+L LH%

Contrastive narrow focus: “Vorrei dei liMOni” (“I would like

lemons”) H*+L L%

Other uses of H*+L

H*+L

With a high (LH%)boundary tone:

-Information Seeking Y/N questions

-Echo Y/N questions

-Echo Wh-questions

With a low boundary tone:

-Contrastive narrow focus statement

-Exclamation

-Exhortation

The pitch accents: L+H*

104

00

2000

4000

6000

8000

104F

req

. (H

z)

2020

76

132

188

244

300

F0 (H

z)

00.10.20.30.40.50.60.70.80.911.11.21.31.41.51.61.71.81.922.12.22.32.42.52.62.72.82.933.13.23.33.43.53.63.73.83.944.14.24.34.44.54.64.74.84.955.15.25.35.45.55.65.75.85.966.16.2

Cocco, melone, mela, anguria, arancia, mandarino, limone

4 4 4 4 4 4 4

L+H* H% L+H* H% L+H* H% L+H* H% L+H* H% L+H* H% H+L*L%

L+H*

Itemizing in list (except for last item): L+H* H%

“Cocco, meLOne, Mela, anGUria, aRAncia, mandaRIno, limone”

(“Coconut, melon, apple, watermelon, orange, tangerine, lemon”)

Other occurrences of L+H*

L+H*

With a high boundary tone

-Item in list

-First tone in disjunctive question

-First tone in wh-question

With a low boundary tone:

-Item in list conveying a “bored” attitude

H+L* ¡H+L* H*+L L+H*

H% (LH%) -We think in

some

surprise/defy

Y/N question

-Probably in

some issue of

offer or

confirmation

seeking question

-2nd tone or

unique tone in

Information

Seeking Y/N

question

-Echo Y/N

questions

-Echo Wh-

questions

-Offer

-Item in List

(before-last),

-First tone in

disjunctive

question

-First tone in wh-

question

M% -Vocative (second

type)

-Doubt (special

utterances)

L% -Broad Focus

Statement

-Imperative

Sentence

-Last item in

declarative list

-2nd tone in

disjunctive

question

-Vocative (First

type)

-Answer

-Categorical

-Evident

-Narrow focus

-Confirmation

seeking Y/N

quetion

-Vocative (first

type)

-Surprise Y/N

questions

-Contrastive

narrow focus

Statement

-Exclamation

-Exhortation

-1st tone in Inf

seeking Y/N

-Item in list

(special, annoyed,

second -before-

last)

Contact issues: calling contours

104

00

2000

4000

6000

8000

104

Fre

q. (

Hz)

2020

96

172

248

324

400

F0 (H

z)

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5

Domenico!

4

L+H* !H%

104

00

2000

4000

6000

8000

104

Fre

q.

(Hz)

5050

120

190

260

330

400

F0 (H

z)

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1

Domenico!

4

¡H+L* L%

104

00

2000

4000

6000

8000

104

Fre

q.

(Hz)

5050

120

190

260

330

400

F0

(Hz)

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6

Domé’!

4

¡H+L* L%

104

00

2000

4000

6000

8000

104

Fre

q. (

Hz)

150150

216

282

348

414

480

F0 (H

z)

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8

A’ Già’!

0 4

¡H+L* L%

“Domenico!” Vocative (dialect-type)“Domenico!” Vocative (Italian type)

“Domé!” Vocative (Dialect) “A Già!” Vocative (Dialect, Anacrusis)

Contact issues: polar questions

Contact issues: polar questions

104

00

2000

4000

6000

8000

104

Fre

q.

(Hz)

150150

190

230

270

310

350

F0 (H

z)

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.2

Avete dei mandarini?

1 0 4

H*+L H%

Information seeking yes/no question: “Avete dei mandaRIni?”

(“Have you got tangerines?”) H*+L LH% vs H*+L L%

104

00

2000

4000

6000

8000

104

Fre

q.

(Hz)

6060

158

256

354

452

550

F0 (H

z)

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4 1.5 1.6

Avete dei mandarini?

1 0 4

L+H* H*+L L%

104

00

2000

4000

6000

8000

104

Fre

q.

(Hz)

100100

170

240

310

380

450

F0

(Hz)

0 0.1 0.2 0.3 0.4 0.5 0.6 0.7 0.8 0.9 1 1.1 1.2 1.3 1.4

Avete mandarini?

1 4

H*+L H%

THANK YOU! GRAZIE! GRACIES!