Intonation and Syllable Structure: A Cross-Linguistic Study of German and Italian Conversations

Abstract

German and Italian have quite different rhythmic and / or melodic characteristics. This paper investigates the correlates of that impression, focussing on intonation and syllable structure. The data are made up of different types of repair activity in German and Italian conversations: problems of expectation, problems of understanding, and contradictions. It turns out that speakers of German and Italian use the same intonational procedures to constitute and contextualise activity types in conversations. For the two languages it is therefore possible to devise a uniform model of intonation contour assignment according to function. A comparison of the syllabic structures of the two languages reveals that the main source of the different impressions made by German and Italian prosodic structure is not intonation, but syllable structure. This accords with recent speech perception studies. © 2003, Walter de Gruyter. All rights reserved.