Modificare la melodia per rafforzare: scelte fonologiche o modulazioni fonetiche?

Three experiments are described in order to discuss the role of variations in intonation on the perception of intensity as defined in this book, i.e. the continuum between a weakened and a strengthen message. The first experiment, composed by both identification and discrimination tests, investigates whether the perception of an acoustic continuum between a broad focus and a contrastive accent corresponds to the perception of a gradual or a categorical change. Results show that the stimuli belonging to the continuum are interpreted as corresponding to two different (categories of) accents (although no categorical perception was found). The second and third experiments aim at checking whether perceptual differences may be found depending on the variety of Italian spoken by subjects and on its phonological characteristics. Two identification tests, focussing on different pairs of accents, on their phonetic correlates, and exploiting stimuli that belong to the variety of Italian spoken in Pisa, was first performed with Pisa subjects and, secondly, with subjects from Florence. Results show that in the case of the broad and contrastive focus pair, Florentine speakers, differently from Pisa speakers, perceive differences between stimuli, but do not identify two different accents at the extremes of the acoustic continuum. In the case of the contrastive focus accent and the accent used - in the Pisa variety - for expressing continuity or syntagmatic contrast, both Pisa and Florentine subjects identify two different accents, depending on the manipulation of alignment and scaling; however, scaling plays a different role for Pisa and Florentine subjects. Thus, results suggest that the continuum of variation between pitch accents used for strengthen or weaken a message may be interpreted categorically (although not through categorical perception), and that, as shown by the differences in perception by speakers of different varieties of Italian, phonological choices have an impact on the phonetic characteristics and on their interpretation.