Tune-text negotiation: the effect of intonation on vowel duration

In the variety of Italian spoken in Bari, polar questions typically have a complex rising-falling(-rising) tune, extending from the last lexical stress to the end of the phrase, whereas statements have a low-falling tune. When polar questions end in a word with final stress, the realization of the complex tune has little time to unfold and thus risks being impoverished. We conducted a production study to investigate how speakers realize these two tunes on words with final open syllables that are stressed (sofà [so'fa] ‘sofa’) or unstressed (palo ['palo] ‘pole’). Results show that when the final vowel is stressed, its duration is considerably longer in questions than in statements (β = 111ms). We interpret this to mean that the realization of the intonation contour is facilitated by extra duration on the vowel, thus providing evidence for tonally conditioned adjustments to segment durations.