Intonation in Production and Perception: The Case of Pisa Italian

The book offers an overview of the methodological aspects and issues of intonation, concerning both production and perception. Through the analysis of Pisa Italian, it focuses on the role of intonation in languages where no lexical function is played by tonal events and provides an example of how the findings relating to production may shed light on the findings obtained through perception, and vice versa. The point discussed in the book is that the variation observed in production and the often fuzzy boundaries between categories found in perception are due to the various types of information that intonation is known to communicate, ranging from linguistic to paralinguistic. Categories in intonation are argued to have different properties from other linguistic units claimed to be categorical, as they show a high within-category variation that is functional to the need to express shades of a meaning together with other information relating to the linguistic structure. In the first two chapters an overview is given of the main topics discussed in relation to the phonetics and phonology of intonation, and of the most widespread methods for investigating it. Attention is then focused on the linguistic uses of intonation, on the proposals that account for these linguistic uses and consider intonation, and tonal variation, part of the linguistic system, requiring a phonological analysis besides a phonetic description. For this reason, the framework mostly referred to is the autosegmental-metrical one, although the analyses and the considerations in the following chapters are intended to suit any investigations that pursue a comprehensive view of both form and function in intonation. The third chapter presents the results of the analysis of speech material, produced by Pisa Italian speakers. Both read and semi-spontaneous speech were considered in order to identify the basic patterns of Pisa Italian intonation. The analysis highlights its main characteristics, by showing both the association of intonational patterns with linguistic functions and the meaning and function of the tonal events that make up the patterns. Speech perception data are discussed in the fourth chapter with the aim of checking whether the tonal events identified in the previous phase of analysis are perceived as corresponding to different categories. Different types of tests are considered, investigating the pitch patterns in the most similar tonal environment possible. The results of categorical perception tests, imitation tests, and those of a test in which subjects have to take decisions and act on the basis of audio stimuli are then discussed, with particular attention to their impact on a phonological analysis of intonation. Finally, in the fifth chapter the results of production and perception experiments are considered and the characteristics of categories in intonation are discussed. That is, the fact they differ from other linguistic categories to exploit effectively a specific communication channel.