Intonation and its interfaces in Sardinian polar questions

In this paper we investigate the interplay between lexicon, syntax, intonation and pragmatics in Sardinian polar questions. To this end, a production study was designed to elicit polar questions with different bias and polarity conditions by means of the Discourse Completion Task Methodology. The re...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Vanrell, Maria del Mar, Ballone, Francesc, Schirru, Carlo, Prieto Vives, Pilar, 1965-
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Estado:Versión publicada
Fecha de publicación:2014
País:España
Institución:Universitat Pompeu Fabra
Repositorio:Repositorio Digital de la UPF
OAI Identifier:oai:repositori.upf.edu:10230/26963
Acceso en línea:http://hdl.handle.net/10230/26963
http://dx.doi.org/10.3989/loquens.2014.014
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Sardinian
Polar questions
Intonation
Sardo
Preguntas absolutas
Entonación
Descripción
Sumario:In this paper we investigate the interplay between lexicon, syntax, intonation and pragmatics in Sardinian polar questions. To this end, a production study was designed to elicit polar questions with different bias and polarity conditions by means of the Discourse Completion Task Methodology. The resulting data were then prosodically and syntactically annotated using Praat. The results can be summarized as follows. Regarding lexico-syntactic markers, the particle a functions as a mitigator or politeness marker, whereas constituent fronting and negation correspond to positive and negative polarity respectively. In addition, two main intonational patterns can be distinguished: the ¡H+L* L% pattern, which expresses “lack of bias”, and the ¡H*+L L- pattern, which conveys the speaker bias towards the proposition.