Phrasing, register level and partial topic constructions in Neapolitan Italian

Mariapaola D’Imperio and Francesco Cangemi

In this paper, we analyze data from Neapolitan Italian showing that register level downstep across prosodic phrases can be a function of information structure and specific discourse strategies. Specifically, we hypothesized that in NP VP sentences, Partial (and thus contrastive) Topic NP phrases are followed by a phrase break and by a downstepped register level in the VP phrase, while this is not true in non-contrastive constructions. We also show that this type of register level downstep is not to be confused with the extreme register compression effect caused by early, contrastive focus (on the sentence-initial NP), though both Partial Topic and Contrastive Focus on a Subject NP appear to induce a phrase break between the NP and the VP phrase.

Keywords : partial topic, contrastive focus, preboundary lengthening, register level downstep, Neapolitan Italian.

1. Introduction

Within the Autosegmental-Metrical theory, pitch accents are predicted to be scaled relatively lower when later within an intermediate phrase, by virtue of either downstep or final lowering (Liberman and Pierrehumbert 1984). Downstep is predicted to be blocked across phrases, since (complete) is observed after an intermediate phrase boundary. However, Ladd (1988) noted that partial reset can be observed in English for certain syntactic constructions, and hence proposed to model this effect as downstep of abstract register features across larger domains (such as two successive intermediate phrases within an phrase). More recently, Truckenbrodt and colleagues (Truckenbrodt 2002; Féry and Truckenbrodt 2005) have emphasized the relevance of prosodic constituency in the dowstepping of register levels in German, by claiming that pitch accent values are merely relational and that the level of prosodic embedding determines the height of the peak. Register level downstep across phrases can also explain partial reset on non initial prosodic phrases, so that phrase- internal downstep would be calculated relative to the reference line set for the specific phrase (see Fig. 1 for a schematic representation of the phenomenon).

Fig. 1 Schematic representation of phrase internal and phrase external or register downstep, from Féry and Truckenbrodt (2005).

Previous work on Germanic languages has hence underlined the role of syntax in determining the level of prosodic embedding. In this paper, we analyze data from Neapolitan Italian showing that register level lowering across prosodic phrases can also be a function of information structure. Specifically, we hypothesized that in an NP VP structure, the register level of the VP phrase would be lowered when coextensive with a focus constituent immediately following a Partial Topic phrase. In other words, we test whether, independent of surface syntactic structure, register downstep (as modeled in previous work, such as by Féry and Truckenbrodt) could be merely due to differences in the information structure of the utterance, that is the Topic/Focus partitioning, as well as by the contrastive/non contrastive nature of Topic and Focus. Note that in Neapolitan Italian it appears that information topics are not always separated from the rest of the utterance by a phrase break (cf. D’Imperio et al. 2008a), which we further test here. We also show here that register level lowering is not to be confused with the extreme register compression effect caused by contrastive narrow focus on the Subject NP. Note though that in Neapolitan Italian, a prosodic break can also appear after an NP when this is syntactically or prosodically branching (D’Imperio et al. 2005, Frota et al. 2007). In that case, though, the edge is usually high or rising (H-), while this is not the case for Contrastive Topic and Narrow Focus phrases (which show respectively a !H- and a L- at their right edge, see §1.3 below). We employ here Büring’s (1997) notion of Partial Topic (PT), in which the sentence topic is used to ‘narrow down’ a given discourse topic represented by an implicit or explicit question, hence offering a partial (non- exhaustive) answer. An example can be found in (1):

(1) a. Da dove venivano i tuoi amici? ‘Where did your friends come from?’

b. [Marina] NP/PT [veniva da Roma] VP ‘(As for) Marina, (she) came from Rome’

Here (1b) offers only a partial answer to the question, in that it predicates something about one member of the set (in other words, as for Marina I know something of, but as for the others, I do not know). But before we discuss information structure theory and its relation with prosodic structure, we shall summarize some findings on syntax based phrasing in Neapolitan Italian.

1.1 Syntax and phrasing

A considerable number of studies have shown that the placement of intonational boundaries in various languages can be affected by non- syntactic levels of grammar, such as information structure, prosodic constraints (such as prosodic weight and balance) and speech rate, which all seem to play a major role in phrasing decisions (Nespor and Vogel 1986, Ghini 1993, Steedman 1991, Oliva 1992, Truckenbrodt 1999, Selkirk 2000, among many others). Moreover, some studies have pointed out language- specific preferences in prosodic groupings. Previous comparative work on intonational phrasing in Romance languages (Elordieta et al. 2003; D’Imperio et al. 2005, Frota et al. 2007) has focused on the role of both syntactic and prosodic factors on the placement of intonational boundaries in broad focus SVO declarative sentences in a number of Romance languages (Northern and European Portuguese, Spanish, Catalan and Neapolitan Italian). Specifically, the effect of syntactic branching (i.e. constituency), prosodic branching (i.e. number of prosodic words), and (i.e. number of ) was examined in a systematic way by first perceptually defining phrasing occurrence (as well as tonally transcribing pitch accent and boundary type) and then performing a number of acoustic measures (such as preboundary lengthening, pitch reset, etc.). However, information structure effects, in absence of syntactic or prosodic differences, had not been previously studied. Among the findings, while in Catalan, syntactic and eurhythmic constraints conspire to produce SVO utterances as two phrases, with a break after the subject or even after the verb (when the object is long), Southern European Portuguese and Neapolitan Italian usually group SVO utterances into a single intonational phrase and only allow for an optional break after S if this is prosodically branching. However, while Subject length in terms of numbers of syllables does not seem to affect phrasing in Neapolitan Italian (see Fig. 2), it matters for Southern European Portuguese since only long branching subjects trigger the presence of a phrase break, not short ones. In Spanish, like in Catalan, the most common phrasing appears to be (S)(VO). However, in contrast with the other Romance languages considered, syntactic branching (and not prosodic length) seems to be a major factor in phrasing decisions in Spanish. It was also found that Romance languages appear to mark prosodic breaks with a high boundary edge tone or, as in the case of Italian, by sustained pitch (marked by the presence of a H- phrase accent), that is a local rise on the accented followed by a high and flat F0 contour continuing until the end of the phrase.

Fig. 2 F0 curve and waveform for the broad focus statement La boliviana mirava la serenata di Maddalena ‘The Bolivian woman looked at Maddalena’s serenade’, uttered as a single prosodic phrase by a speaker of Neapolitan Italian (taken from D’Imperio et al. 2005).

In this paper, we show evidence for the existence of a mid level phrase accent (!H-) marking the right edge of a Subject phrase in specific Topic constructions, as well as widespread use of L- for marking the right edge of a narrow focus constituent (for narrow contrastive focus effects, cf. D’Imperio, 2001, 2002). Moreover, when pitch reset was also measured after the phrase break, it was found that Spanish and Italian tend to show more pitch reset (though partial) than the other Romance languages. This and other findings point to the existence of strong language preferences for boundary placement, which are not simply derived through universal syntactic constraints. Some of these constraints have been shown to be prosodic in nature and some of them have also recently been formalized within an Optimality theoretical framework (Prieto 2005, Feldhausen to appear). For instance, Prieto has proposed the existence of a constraint Max-Bin-End in Catalan, stating that prosodic phrases containing the main of the utterance (hence the phrase at the end of the Intonation Phrase, which explains the name of the constraint proposed) consist of maximally two prosodic words. Hence, the predicted phrasing pattern in La bimba mirava | la serenata meravellosa ‘The girl admired the marvelous serenade’ is one in which the break is after the verb, and not after the Subject NP, since la serenata meravellosa is composed of two minor prosodic phrases. It is this constraint, then, that would then be responsible for placing a phrase break after V within a VP when the Object phrase is long. More recently, the body of work on Romance languages has been increased through work on French (D'Imperio et al. 2008b, D'Imperio and Michelas 2010, Michelas and D'Imperio 2010a, 2010b), where additional evidence for the existence of an intermediate level of phrasing has been found. In this language, intermediate phrases appear to be mainly syntactically driven, in that they tend to occur at the right edge of a maximal projection when the prosodic structure allows it.

1.2 Discourse structure and phrasing

It is a well-known fact that intonational patterns can influence and are, in turn, affected by pragmatic (Bolinger 1965, Halliday 1967, Jackendoff 1972, Lambrecht 1994, Ladd 1980) and semantic (Féry 1993, Büring 1997, among others) interpretation in several languages. As first noted by Jackendoff (1972), specific tonal configurations can induce certain semantic effects related to information packaging (the partitioning of the utterance content into focus and background material), such as in the case of the classic example shown in (2):

(2) i. A. What about the beans? Who ate them? B. FRED ate the beans L+H* L- (H%) ii. A. Who ate the beans? B. *FRED ate the beans L+H* L- (H%)

Here, B is felicitous in the context of A only in (2i), when it carries a specific tonal configuration, known under the name of “B accent”, since it marks the Background or Topic information (though a specific phrase accent and boundary tone should be also produced), which is usually a rise- fall(-rise) contour. The fact that B is infelicitous in the context of question A in (2ii) (in which Fred is the Focus) shows the importance of discourse adequacy when interpreting propositional meaning. The “B” accent issue, which was first formalized within classic generative semantics, still occupies a central place in discourse theories and prosodic research, as recent work on a number of Germanic languages shows (Büring 1997, Braun 2004). For instance, a configuration similar to the English “B” accent has been found in German by Büring (1997) who has linked it to the notion of “contrastive” topic. 1 Specifically, a contrastive topic would “evoke a set of alternatives”, though different typologies are subsumed under this label, such as shifting topics (when the topic of the conversation is changed from one utterance to another), topics that do actually contrast one alternative against the mentioned one, or else “partial” topics, as in (2i) above, where the answer to the question is “partial” (so that only one member of the evoked set is chosen and not all of them). Generally, special syntactic patterns, such as topicalization and left dislocation, are employed as a means to express contrastive topics in Romance languages, while Germanic languages can simply rely on intonation in order to achieve such effects. In a more recent account, Büring (2003) claims that a contrastive topic (CT), namely an expression marked by a specific tonal configuration (which contrasts with a typical hat pattern for broad focus utterances) such as a B accent in English, indicates a complex discourse strategy and its use seems to be highly restricted within discourse. In Italian, as in other Romance languages, it appears that topics show a preference for sentence initial position (Brunetti, 2009). We also know that non-focused NP-subjects are often accented and can even be set off in their own prosodic phrase (Nakatani, 1997). This seems to be the case for contrastive (here partial) topics in Italian (see also Brunetti et al. 2010 for clitic left dislocated utterances). We will show here phonetic evidence for a separate phrasing of the VP phrase in partial topic constructions both from boundary related phenomena as well as from global pitch lowering of the intermediate phrase associated to the post-topic phrase.

1.3 Signaling information structure and pitch accent types in Italian

Neapolitan Italian intonation, as a number of other Italian varieties, has been described by means of the Autosegmental-Metrical model of intonation (D’Imperio 2000, 2001, 2002; Grice et al. 2005). Concerning the focus/background partition and the role of intonation in Neapolitan, two types of focal accents can be found, namely a !H+L* falling accent (Fig. 3, left), which is employed to express information, non-contrastive focus, and a L+H* (Fig. 3, right) rising accent, mainly employed to express narrow, contrastive focus (D’Imperio 2001; Face and D’Imperio 2005).

Fig. 3 Schematic representation of a broad focus nuclear accent (!H+L*, left), and a narrow focus nuclear accent (L+H*, right) in Neapolitan.

As for topic (or non-focal) accents, there appears to be a default H* accent which is employed for non-contrastive topics, showing a peak in the post-tonic syllable, as shown in Fig. 4 (top). 2 On the other hand, as for a specific instance of contrastive topics, namely the partial topic constructions, it is usually associated to a rising configuration whose peak is aligned late within the stressed syllable, but never beyond its boundaries. This pitch accent resembles the one employed for narrow focus questions, i.e., its peak is very late within the stressed syllable and it has an expanded pitch range with a very prominent peak. In a previous study (D’Imperio et al. 2008a) we analyzed the phonological and phonetic properties of the prenuclear rises in both contrastive and non-contrastive topics and found that: 1. when measured relative to stressed syllable offset, the contrastive topic rise is always timed inside of its Tone Bearing Unit (TBU), which is not the case for the default, non-contrastive prenuclear rise; 2. the contrastive topic rise appears to be followed by a phrase accent whose pitch height was higher than usually found for post-focal, falling L- phrase accents, which we label as !H-. Fig. 5 shows two renditions of the sentence Milena lo vuole amaro ‘Milena likes it (i.e. the coffee) unsweetened’ uttered by speaker B, in two different contexts. In context 1, the utterance is a follow up of a question in which Milena is explicitly set as the Topic (T). In 1b, the VP is then the focus (the new information), and the answer is exhaustive. In 2a, on the other hand, the Topic is “your friends”, so that 2b is only a partial answer of the “question under discussion”. Hence, the Topic of 2b is “constrastive” or “partial” (PT), in Büring’s terms.

1a. Come lo vuole il caffé Milena? “How would Milena like her coffee?” 1b. [ Milena ]T lo vuole amaro. “Milena would like it unsweetened.”

2a. Come lo vogliono il caffé i tuoi amici? “How do your friends would like to have their coffee?” 2b. [ Milena ]PT lo vuole amaro. “(As for) Milena (she) would like it unsweetened.”

Fig. 4 Pitch tracks for the sentence Milena lo vuole amaro uttered as an exhaustive answer (top) and as a Partial Topic (PT) answer (bottom). Note the presence of the !H- phrase accent after the Subject NP in the PT rendition.

1.4 Hypotheses

In the present study we set out to investigate the nature of the prosodic break after the partial topic rise (PT rise henceforth) versus the absence of such a break after the default topic rise (T rise henceforth) found in exhaustive answers. In D’Imperio et al. (2008a) we informally observed that, among the various properties marking the break in the PT utterances there appeared to be only a partial reset of the pitch range following the topic phrase. As shown in Fig. 5, the register level for the Verb Phrase is not the same when different focal and topic structures are considered. Note that the register level for this part of the contour appears to be: 1. highest in a T utterance, where no phrase break is present after the prenuclear rise, 2. lowest and extremely compressed when post-focal within an early contrastive narrow focus statement (CF henceforth), 3. intermediate between a T and a CF utterance for PT utterances.

Fig. 5 Pitch tracks for three renditions (as T = non-contrastive topic, PT = partial topic and CF = contrastive focus) of the sentence Milena lo vuole amaro ‘Milena drinks it black’, uttered by the Neapolitan speaker WP. The curves are lined up at the NP-VP boundary (vertical line). Data taken from D’Imperio et al. 2008a.

Recent work by Frascarelli and colleagues (Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl 2007) on the reflex of topic structure in Italian has advanced a few claims such as that all topics are set off by an intonation phrase break, with a “right edge marked by F0 resetting and followed by a rhythmic break”, while the rest of the sentence is “maintained on a low range for the relevant speaker […] and no particular peaks can be noticed” (Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl 2007:91). The authors also claim that in terms of pitch accent choice, Topics are usually marked by rises (a L*+H rise for a shifting topic, H* for a contrastive topic), though “familiar topics” tend to be marked by a L* in both peripheries of the sentence. Finally, they also claim that, when initial, Topics are always followed by a L edge tone “which typically signals the end of a prosodic phrase with declarative illocutionary force” (Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl 2007:94). The main hypothesis tested in the present study is that Topics (which are neither extra-sentential nor syntactically left-dislocated) do not need to be characterized by the presence of a phrase break, and that prosodic structure is the result of a specific discourse strategy. We shall show here that only Subject NPs of Partial (and thus contrastive) Topic and constrastively focused utterances are set off in their own prosodic phrase, while non-contrastive topics are not. More specifically, we predicted (Hypothesis 1) that only partial topic (PT) and contrastive focus (CF) utterances are characterized by the presence of two prosodic phrases, with the topic or focus NP being set off in their own phrase, ending with a !H- phrase accent in PT constructions and a L- phrase accent in the CF utterances. The presence of a phrase break, apart from previously reported tonal evidence (D’Imperio et al. 2008a), is here further supported by measures of both preboundary lengthening and initial (postboundary) strengthening. By measuring the duration of the last syllable before the potential phrase break (that is, at the end of the NP phrase) as well as the first syllable of the VP, we tested whether lengthening occurs only when a perceptible phrase break is present, marked by the presence of a phrase accent. The hypothesis stemmed from the observation that exhaustive answers in which the Topic NP is non-contrastive, no phrase accent is present, contra previous observations by Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl (2007).3 This appears to be true independent of the presence or absence of clitic left dislocation (see also Brunetti et al. 2010). The second hypothesis (Hypothesis 2) was that the register level of the second prosodic phrase (the Verb Phrase) of the PT utterances would not be completely reset, so that its values would be lower than those for a VP phrase in the default topic (T) condition, and higher than the register level in the post-focal section of the utterance in early focus, contrastive statements.

2. Method

2.1 Corpus

We used three different but highly controlled sentences, with a comparable grammatical and rhythmic structure. Each had as NP a tri- syllabic first name, with penultimate stress ( Milèna , Valèria , Amèlia ), and each VP had two stressed constituents (the verb and one argument) (see D’Imperio et al. 2008a for more details). We manipulated the information structure of the target sentences in order to obtain specific phrasing and prominence patterns. Specifically, the NP was either a default Topic (T) followed by a focal VP, a Partial Topic (PT) followed by a focal VP, or a Contrastive Narrow Focus (CF) followed by a given VP. The sentences were all uttered as statements. In order to induce different NP interpretations, each sentence was presented after a contextualization paragraph and a question. In example (3), the target sentence had a default topic interpretation, in example (4) it has a partial topic interpretation, while in (5) it has a contrastive focus interpretation.

(3) Exhaustive answer Sunday lunch with your family and a friend of yours. Your mother, who is preparing coffee, wants to know if your friend wants sugar in it. She asks: Come lo beve Milena? ‘How does Milena drink coffee? ’ You answer: Milena (T) lo vuole amaro. ‘Milena likes it unsweetened’

(4) Partial answer Lunch among school-mates. Your brother is preparing coffee for everybody and wants to know how much sugar to add. You don’t know everybody’s preferences, but only those of your desk-mate. He asks: Come lo prendono i tuoi amici? ‘How do your friends drink coffee?’ You answer: Milena (PT) lo vuole amaro. ‘(As for) Milena (she) likes it black’

(5) Contrastive answer Your friend who works at a bar is always confused when you go and have coffee with your friends. He asks: Giovanna lo beve amaro? ‘Is it Giovanna who drinks it black?’ You answer: Milena (CF) lo vuole amaro. ‘It is Milena who drinks it black’

2.2 Procedure

The recordings were performed in a quiet room using a Roland Edirol UA 25EX sound card connected to a laptop and through a Sennheiser E 835 microphone. A male (MB) and a female (WP) speaker of Neapolitan Italian with no reported speech disorders participated in the experiment. They received the same block of randomized cards, each containing a context- setting paragraph and a target sentence in boldface. Then they were instructed to silently read the whole content of the card, and to read aloud the boldface sentence only. The experimental items were interspersed with 51 filler sentences, also preceded by a context-setting paragraph. Five experimental items were excluded from analysis because of disfluencies, accidental noise or other factors, leaving us with 2 speakers * 3 sentences * 3 interpretations (T, PT, CF) * 5 repetitions – 5 excluded = 85 analyzable items.

2.3 Measurements

In order to verify whether a phrase break was present or not, we measured preboundary lengthening at the end of the NP item as well as initial strengthening at the beginning of the VP (see Hypothesis 1). In order to do so, the duration of both NP-final syllable (S) ([rja], [na], [lja], for Valeria, Milena and Amelia , respectively), labelled Pre S, and vowel (V), Pre V, were measured, as well as the duration of the VP-initial syllable (Post S) and vowel (Post V), as shown in Fig. 10. In order to gauge register compression within the VP (see Hypothesis 2), we measured the F0 height of the first (H1) and second (H2) peak occurring on the first and second stressed syllables in the VP (see Fig. 6).

Fig. 6 Schematic representation of the measures. Duration: preboundary (Pre) and postboundary (Post) syllable (S) and vowel (V). Register: first (H1) and second (H2) postboundary peak.

3. Results

3.1 Lengthening at boundary

We will first show the results concerning Hypothesis 1, that is, that both preboundary and postboundary lengthening would not occur in non- contrastive topic utterances, which are not set off in their own prosodic phrase, while they are in partial topic utterances and contrastive focus utterances. Figure 7 shows that indeed the last syllable of the partial topic phrase (PT) and its vowel (left and right panels, respectively) are lengthened relative to the non-contrastive topic (T), which is the only construction in which no lengthening is observed. Note that for speaker WP preboundary vowels are shorter in the contrastive narrow focus (CF) context than in PT context, though both syllable and vowel durations are still longer in CF than in T utterances for both speakers, as expected. It appears, hence, that T utterances posses the same prosodic structure of typical all focus (or broad focus) utterances of Neapolitan where the NP is non-branching and short (see also D’Imperio et al. 2005). In order to validate these observations, we first performed a normality distribution check. Shapiro-Francia tests always yielded p-values above 0.05 (also for postboundary and height measures). Then we ran for each speaker two separate ANOVAs (on preboundary syllable and vowel), using sentence type as predictor. For both speakers and both measures, the results were highly significant (df=2, 12 < F < 17). Post-hoc Tukey tests revealed that, for both speakers, both preboundary syllables and vowels are significantly shorter in non-contrastive topic context (p<0.05 for WP vowels, p<0.01 for the others). The effect size is of the order of 30ms, a considerable difference for unstressed syllables or vowels.

Fig. 7 Boxplots for preboundary syllable (left) and vowel (right) durations for speaker WP (top) and MB (bottom) in the three different contexts (T, PT, CF).

The results for postboundary lengthening are instead less clear, in that a significant difference between T and the other contexts was not found for speaker MB. As it can be seen in Figure 8, durations in T context do tend to be shorter than in PT or CF, but the effect is weaker than in the preboundary case: ANOVAs are significant only for speaker WP (4 < F < 8), for which Tukey tests point again to a significantly shorter duration in T context (p<0.01 for syllables, p<0.05 for vowels).

Fig. 8 Boxplots for postboundary syllable (left) and vowel (right) durations for speaker WP (top) and MB (bottom) in the three different contexts (T, PT, CF).

3.2 Postboundary range compression

According to hypothesis 2 we expected to find an intermediate register level for VP phrases in partial topic context (PT), i.e. lower than in non-contrastive topics (T, in which no pitch range compression is found) and contrastive narrow focus (CF, in which the post-boundary register is maximally compressed) contexts. As Figure 9 shows, data from speaker WP fully supports our hypothesis. Data from speaker MB shows a very similar trend, but (especially for the second peak) we can only notice a major difference between CF and the other contexts. As expected, ANOVAs run independently on each speaker (to avoid F0 normalization) were highly significant [F(34, 48); p<0.01) for both speakers and both H1 and H2 peaks. Post-hoc Tukey tests showed a significant difference for all levels (p<0.01), except for the T vs. PT contrast for speaker MB. The size of all significant effects is clearly above the perceptual threshold, being larger than 10Hz for MB (male) and larger than 20Hz for WP (female).

Fig. 9 Boxplots for the first (left) and the second (right) postboundary peak height for speaker WP (top) and MB (bottom) in the three different contexts (T, PT, CF).

4. Discussion

In this paper we have explored the register behavior of non-initial prosodic phrases in relation to information structure, specifically concerning the putative distinction between contrastive (specifically ‘Partial’) Topic answers vs. exhaustive answers. By measuring the height of the first and the second H peak within the Verb Phrase of an SVO sentence, we have uncovered a systematic behavior of the pitch register, which supports the hypothesis of a global compression of the pitch level in that region. In particular, there appears to be a weaker register compression within the non- initial prosodic phrase of partial topic utterances than in narrow focus utterances (in which the register compression is maximal). In exhaustive answers, we noticed the absence of an utterance internal prosodic break, so that the pitch register within the VP region is not compressed but shows values that are typical for broad focus utterances in which the Subject is non-branching and prosodically short. Specifically, data from speaker WP fully supported all hypotheses, while data from speaker MB were less clear-cut: as for the duration data, a statistically significant difference between PT and T utterances was found for the preboundary but not in postboundary measures; as for register, though data showed a very similar trend to WP’s, only H1 and H2 peaks of contrastive focus utterances were statistically different from all the others. Though for speaker MB postboundary duration results failed to isolate non-contrastive topics from the other conditions, and register results failed to separate non-contrastive from partial topics, we believe that the three-way distinction between T, PT and CF can be still maintained for this speaker. In fact, if non-contrastive topics were characterized by neither preboundary lengthening nor postboundary register compression, while contrastive focus show both effects, partial topics consistently showed mixed proprieties, in that they showed preboundary lengthening relative to T utterances (as CFs) though the VP phrase did not show a significant range compression (as for T utterances). What is more, in about a fourth of his partial topic renditions, speaker MB produced a pause of about 150ms between the two phrases. Since pauses never occurred in the two other contexts, we conclude that various cue interplay to ultimately produce different phrasing patterns in the three contexts, for both speakers. The most likely explanation for such a phenomenon would be in line with a register level downstep across prosodic phrases, such as the model proposed by van den Berg et al. (1992) and more recently by Truckenbrodt (2002, Féry and Truckenbrodt 2005). Note though that previous models predict downstep across phrases as the result of syntactic embedding, and not of semantic partitioning for information structure. Here we show that syntactic structure is not the only source of register level downstep. Specifically, focal phrases following a partial topic would be lowered, and this lowering would be greater than the default downstep observed on falling H+L* nuclear accents in exhaustive answers. This lowering might be employed to perceptually enhance the contrastive nature of the Topic, which is also signaled by higher F0 values and stronger stressed vowel lengthening (see D’Imperio et al. 2008a) within the Subject NP in PT constructions. An alternative hypothesis might interpret register lowering within PT Verb Phrases as a result of rightward spreading of the !H- phrase accent marking the right edge of the NP, and which seems to be typical of the partial topic accentual configuration. If that would be the case, pitch accents within the non-initial (VP) prosodic phrase would be completely erased, which is not in line with what we have observed in our data. In fact, the F0 contour following !H- is not completely flat, since two audible and acoustically prominent accents (H1 and H2) can be discerned in the post- topic region. Another important finding is that, in our view, not all sentential topics are separately phrased in Italian, which does not support the hypothesis of Frascarelli (2000) and Frascarelli and Hinterölzl (2007). In a previous study (D’Imperio et al. 2008a) we determined that, though the rising pitch accent characterizing partial topic and exhaustive answers seems to belong to the same category (in that its alignment from the onset of the stressed syllable is the same), only partial topic accents are followed by an edge tone. Moreover, the height of the partial topic phrase accent is different, namely higher, than the L- phrase accent marking the right edge of contrastive focus phrases. Additional supporting evidence for the hypothesis of a separate phrasing of partial topic NPs comes from both preboundary as well as initial strengthening. The results presented here show that the same amount of preboundary lengthening and postboundary or initial strengthening is found in partial topic and contrastive focus NPs, since both constituents are separately phrased, while this is not the case for Subject NPs of exhaustive answers. Hence, the post-topic register compression is reminiscent of the compression found in post-focal regions, though not as extreme, which supports the hypothesis of a compound intonation domain and global register level downstep. From informal observations, it appears that an appropriate register level is needed in order for the global partial topic tune to be grammatical. Though pitch differences appear to be relatively small in absolute terms, they are on the other hand potentially audible since we know that F0 changes which are later within a prosodic phrase are perceived as larger changes relative to the same differential early in a prosodic phrase (Pierrehumbert, 1979). A relatively low pitch range within the posttopic phrase does not preclude the presence of noticeable peaks ( contra Franscarelli and Hinterhölzl 2007), though the register of the non-initial phrase is downstepped. Finally, again different from what was found by Frascarelli and Hiterhölzl (2007), a pitch rise in the topic region does not necessarily indicate a (topic) shift or a (topic) contrast, since the same kind of initial H* rise marks Subject NPs initiating exhaustive answers and partial answers. This also means that “aboutness topics” (our non- contrastive topics) do not need to be followed by a prosodic break. We also speculate that partial topic tunes might indicate a complex discourse strategy (Büring 2003) and not simply show a generalized effect of information structure (background-focus structuring of the utterance, see also Brunetti et al. 2010). When a H* !H-% tune is encountered, this might trigger an implicature (a discourse strategy), specifically a contrastive implicature (as defined in Vallduví & Vilkuna 1998). We plan to explore in the future whether these differences are perceptible by means of context- matching studies in which we shall cross-splice and combine different topic and post-topic contours and ask for acceptability judgments on the part of the listeners.

References

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1 Topic is usually defined as « what the sentence is about » (Reinhardt 1981) and appears to be linearly constrained to be initial in the sentence in most Romance languages (Brunetti 2009). 2 For a detailed phonological analysis of the alignment and association properties of prenuclear and nuclear rises in Neapolitan Italian see Prieto et al. 2005. 3 Note that in the study by Frascarelly and Hinterhölzl neither preboundary lengthening nor quantitative evidence for tonal height at the potential boundary site is reported (while only impressionistic transcriptions can be found).