Modelli intonativi dell'interrogazione in una varietà di italiano meridionale

This article describes the question intonation of the regional Italian spoken in Cosenza. A wide corpus of wh-, yes/no and disgiuntive questions is investigated, both phonetically and phonologically. The analysis performed points out a series of remarkable differences. First of all, the questions considered show a different placement of the nuclear pitch accent. As a rule, the nucleus is placed on the final word of the utterance in yes/no questions, on the verb and sometimes on the wh-word in the wh-questions, on the first lexical option in the alternative questions. Intonation plays a considerable role; but it’s important to notice the absence of a prosodic underspecification: the three types of questions share a same bitonal accent, L+H*, and an identical boundary tone, L%. Nevertheless, several variants of the same tonal sequence are observed. They are phonetically characterized from a different peak alignment with respect to the edges of the stressed syllable. We have observed pitch accents in which both the tonal targets are realized inside the nuclear stressed syllable, and pitch accents in which, on the contrary, both targets are outside of it. The phonological representation of these tones is very crucial, since the intonational theory cannot correctly describe them. In the final part of the article, some theoretical interpretations are proposed.