Intonation of wh-questions in the dialect of Monopoli (Bari)

Abstract

The prosodic study of Italian and its varieties has received extensive research, but the intonation of Italian dialects remains one of the least investigated areas.  The study aims to analyse the intonation of wh-questions in Italian and the dialect of Monopoli, a town located on the Adriatic side of Apulia. Currently, there are no available prosodic studies for this dialect. To achieve this, an experimental procedure was used. The corpus included 315 wh-questions and a control sample of 360 declaratives and polar questions. The target sentences were produced by six informants from Monopoli during a controlled task. The sentences were annotated using ToBI and analysed phonetically and phonologically. Upon comparison, it is revealed that wh-questions produced in the local dialect show particular rhythmic-accentual patterns, determined by a different order of constituents or the frequent presence of final truncated words, which influence their intonation contours. In this dialect, the wh- questions have a higher percentage of rising final contours (H%) compared to the questions produced in local Italian. However, the nuclear pitch accent does not differ, as it is rising (L+H*) in both varieties. In contrast, the intonation of wh-questions differs from both declaratives, typically falling (H+L*L%) and polar questions, in this case by a different boundary tone.