On the prosodic marking of contrast in Romance sentence topic: evidence from Neapolitan Italian

Lisa Brunetti (1) , Mariapaola d'Imperio (2) , Francesco Cangemi (2)

1 DDL - Dynamique Du Langage
2 LPL - Laboratoire Parole et Langage

In this paper we present data in Neapolitan Italian that show a clear phonological difference in intonation between a clitic left dislocated object topic in an exhaustive answer and in a partial answer. In the latter, the topic expression is set aside in its own prosodic phrase, made of a rising accent (H*) followed by a !H- boundary tone. An exhaustive answer does not show such phrasing pattern. The finding of a 'partial' tune in Romance provides a solution to the pragmatic problem of defining sentence topic by supporting a bi-dimensional model of Information Structure.

Mots clés: Information structure; Neapolitan Italian; pitch accent; phrasing; contrastive topic

Domaines: Linguistique; Linguistique

Lisa Brunetti, Mariapaola d'Imperio, Francesco Cangemi. On the prosodic marking of contrast in Romance sentence topic: evidence from Neapolitan Italian. International Conference on Speech Prosody, May 2010, Chicago, United States. pp.1-4. ⟨hal-00541974⟩