SENTENCE-DOMAIN EFFECTS ON TONAL ALIGNMENT IN ITALIAN?

Caterina Petrone1 & D. Robert Ladd2
1Laboratoire Parole et Langage (LPL) & Université de Provence; 2University of Edinburgh

ID 1221
[full paper]

In a production experiment, we investigated sentence-domain effects on the alignment of Italian accents, and found that the nuclear peak is aligned earlier in long sentences than in short sentences. These findings are superficially contrary to traditional “time-pressure” explanations for variability in tonal alignment and raise some questions about the domain of pitch gestures. When the effects of sentence duration on speaking rate are taken into account, however, our results may be consistent with much previous work.