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

1. Conferenza annuale A.I.S.V. 2005 (Università degli Studi di Salerno, 30 Novembre - 2 Dicembre 2005). TAVOLA ROTONDA The “interpretative” foundation of Intonation Unit (IU) or Intonation Phrase (). Amedeo De Dominicis

2. 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?

3. 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.

4. 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 ?

5. 30 9,8 – 10 - 9,9 st. 8,5- 9,8 - 8,1- 9,3 st. 2,5 – 2 - 4,3 st. Se tu non hai due macchine -12 0 1.16971 Time (s) Where is Nucleus? Query Napoli (DGmtA01N_p1G#51)

6. Test on functional load of Nucleus • Original • Only Pitch • Only Pitch without first head • Only Pitch without second head • 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 ”)?

7. 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 .

8. To summarize, the theoretical faults of the definition of Σ: • The demarcative value of the nucleus in Σ: its singleness is problematical (as we can find sentences characterized by multiple prominences). • The culminative value of the nucleus in Σ: its prominence is only phonetic (it is the highest F0 value in the sentence): inductive approach. • The external delimitation boundaries of Σ are interpretative and not grammatical or structural or formal. • On the whole, Σ results more from an interpretative(in glossematics terms) process, than from a structural or grammatical or formal framework.