PowerPoint Presentation - Swiss German intonation

1
Declarative and interrogative falls in
Trevigiano Elinor Payne University of Cambridge
emp14_at_cam.ac.uk

• Intransitive Statements
• VS (Xe arivà Mario) HLL SV (Mario xe arivà)
  HL(H) H
• H cant be due simply to truncation, as thered
  be final rise ( fall) in VS
• NA/ CON (SVLOC) HLL HLHL CONF (SV)
  HLL HL (H)H

• Statements allomorphism?
• SVO transitives (el ga magnà un pomo)
• Mix of fall-rise-falls (HLHL) and falls (HLL).
  Stressed syllable appears to be aligned with
  first L
• Possible unifying interpretation HL (H) L
• Phrase Accent H not always realised / present?
• Or possibly a choice of Phrase Accent (L or H)
• Same variants for BR, NA, CON (though H nearly
  always there for CON). Difference pre-nuclear?

• Trevigano
• Italo-Romance dialect spoken in Treviso (NE
  Italy). Reported sing-songy intonation
  (Canepari, 1980)
• Like many northern Italian dialects, has clitic
  subject pronouns, e.g. el ga magnà (he has
  eaten)
• clitic-verb inversion in questions, e.g. gao
  magnà? - has he eaten?

• Interrogatives
• WH question words (cosa diseo/ cosa gao magnà
  /dove xeo andà) LH
• BR NA HL(H) H HLL
• Polar (andà a Verona?/gao magnà un pero?)
• BR HL(H)H
• NA HL(H)H HLL LHH
• CON HL(H)H HLHL LHLL

• Purpose of study
• establish inventory of nuclear pitch accents and
  other tonal phenomena
• explore interaction of morphosyntax intonation
  in signalling phrase type

• Material
• Subjects
• 4 dialectophones (3F, 1M)
• Read written dialogues
• intrans. (SV and VS) vs trans. (SV(O))
• Statements vs questions (polar vs WH)
• focus broad BR narrow NA contrastive CON
  confirming CONF

• Summary and thoughts for further investigation
• Nuclear Pitch Accent HL in statements
  questions for different focus types
• (Optional) Phrase Accent H choice of L/H gt
  variation (falls, fall-rises, fall-rise-falls
  (similar to rise-plateau-slumps, Cruttenden,
  1986)).
• So how is phrase/focus type signalled?
• variation in pre-nuclear tonal pattern?
• morphosyntactic means alone (clitic inversion)?

• SV transitives (el ga xa magnà)
• fall-rises HL (H) H (sharper rise w/ H)
• Possible explanation for difference from SVO
  Truncation of final L due to Pitch Accent
  coinciding with boundary. (SV intransitives also
  often end in H)
• BUT doesnt explain sharp vs gentle rises, AND
  would expect falls too