The “interpretative” foundation of Intonation Unit (IU) or

Intonation Phrase ().

Amedeo De Dominicis

Conferenza annuale A.I.S.V. 2005 (Università degli Studi di Salerno, 30 Novembre - 2 Dicembre 2005).

TAVOLA ROTONDA

A phonological definition of the

• a unit provided by an internal structure of hierarchical nature.

• nucleus or head = the top hierarchical and therefore obligatory component.

• nucleus or head = salient or prominent.• nucleus or head = obligatory and therefore

structural.• the structural role grants the linguistic and not

purely perceptive nature of the intonation units.• IU in parametric approach of Aix-en-Provence school (Daniel Hirst) and PS (Prosodic

Structure) in Philippe Martin’s paper are linguistic in those terms?

Nucleus or nuclei ?

• But we would speak not of one, but of different definitions of nucleus of the , each founded on a different definition of salience (tonal, accentual and metrical salience). So, the nucleus can be identified with the most stressed syllable (or the last stressed one) of the , with the highest one or with the most focused (that is belonging to the comment). To these three definitions correspond as many theoretical models.

Nucleus or nuclei ?

• But is the location of the nucleus only a question of phonetics (the highest pitch, or the strongest metrical syllable, or the most prominent stress, or their addition - as maybe in Aix approach)?

• Or is the location of the nucleus a linguistic matter ?

Where is Nucleus?

Time (s)0 1.16971

-12

30

9,8 – 10 - 9,9 st. 8,5 - 9,8 - 8,1 - 9,3 st. 2,5 – 2 - 4,3 st.

Se hai macchine tu non

due

Query Napoli (DGmtA01N_p1G#51)

Test on functional load of Nucleus

• Original

1. Only Pitch

2. Only Pitch without first head

3. Only Pitch without second head

4. Only Pitch without third head

Perceptive Identity…..?: the lack of a single prominence does not affect the identification nor the discrimination. With respect to linguistics, the whole set of prominences seems to bear the functional load of the sentence.

Question: how do we describe this sentence: as a sequence of or as a single with multiple prominences … (I would call it “grid ”)?

But what about the external delimitation of ?

• Traditionally, the following list of four phenomena is retained as marker of boundaries: pauses (begin-end), anacrusis (begin), tonal reset on unstressed syllables (begin), final lengthening (end).

• Potentially, all pauses, lengthenings, tonal resets or anacruses in a conversation may be -markers: how to settle which one is a real -marker ?

• Different answers for different speakers-styles (“pause-full” or “pause-free”, allegro/lento-form) and for different languages (in a tonal language tonal reset and anacrusis can be induced by lexical tone propagation).

• They are or may be stylistic markers that could depend on the speaker or on the language; thus they are not grammatical or formal markers of .

To summarize, the theoretical faults of the definition of Σ:

1. The demarcative value of the nucleus in Σ: its singleness is problematical (as we can find sentences characterized by multiple prominences).

2. The culminative value of the nucleus in Σ: its prominence is only phonetic (it is the highest F0 value in the sentence): inductive approach.

3. The external delimitation boundaries of Σ are interpretative and not grammatical or structural or formal.

4. On the whole, Σ results more from an interpretative (in glossematics terms) process, than from a structural or grammatical or formal framework.