Do mitigation strategies affect prosodic correlates? An investigation on orders and requests in Italian

Mayara Da Silva Neto; Barbara Gili Fivela; Elisabetta Santoro; Flaviane Romani Fernandes Svartman

doi:10.17469/O2107AISV000014

Authors

Mayara Da Silva Neto Department of Modern Languages, University of São Paulo/Brazil
Barbara Gili Fivela Department of Humanities, University of Salento https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4694-8652
Elisabetta Santoro Department of Modern Languages, University of São Paulo/Brazil https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7577-368X
Flaviane Romani Fernandes Svartman Department of Classical and Vernacular Languages and Literatures, University of São Paulo/Brazil https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9941-3934

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17469/O2107AISV000014

Keywords:

intonation, orders, requests, Lecce Italian, Autosegmental Metrical framework

Abstract

This paper aims to identify whether and to what extent mitigation procedures affect the intonational pattern of orders and requests produced by Italian speakers (from Lecce), within different social distances contexts. Data were collected using a variant of the Discourse Completion Task (DCT) and analyzed within the Autosegmental Metrical framework, on the basis of auditory perception, analysis of the phonological function and exploration of the F0 contour. The results indicate that 1) the intonational patterns of orders and requests differ especially when the latter are expressed by the interrogative form and specifically, as far as intonation is concerned, by a different boundary tone. Moreover, 2) the presence of lexical means of mitigation and the low social distance interact in a complex manner in orders and request, but often favors more peremptory, less neutral patterns.