Intonation in simultaneous bilingualism of Italian and dialects: A speaker-specific approach

Abstract

Aims and objectives/purpose/research questions:

This study is concerned with the intonation of simultaneous bilingualism of Neapolitan, an Italo-Romance primary dialect, and the local variety of Italian spoken in Naples (southern Italy), whose investigation is pursued by taking the individual bilingual speaker as the starting point for qualitative and quantitative analyses. To this end, we examine the accentual variants used by each speaker in the production of broad- and contrastive-focus declaratives in the two languages. Such accentual variants are seen as the instantiation of particular processes at play in the moulding of bilinguals’ ‘tonal spaces’.

Design/methodology/approach:

For the inspection and identification of accentual variants, we rely on unsupervised clustering algorithms (i.e., k-means for longitudinal data) in conjunction with Generalised Additive Mixed Models (GAMM). By doing so, we generate a ‘tonal space’ for each speaker.

Data and analysis:

We rely on a corpus of Discourse Completion Tasks by nine bilingual speakers of Italian and Neapolitan with a comparable sociolinguistic profile in terms of age, gender, education level, and L1. Unlike most studies on Italian intonation, which focus on university-level students, we target speakers with a technical/vocational background.

Findings/conclusions:

Findings offer proof that the intonation of bilingual speakers results from the interaction of several dimensions. Bilingual speakers can differ as per the number of accentual realisations, as well as in terms of form-function mappings; they can further organise their tonal space around pivotal realisations by orienting their productions towards one language or the other.

Originality and significance/implications:

The work is a trailblazer in the analysis of bilingual prosody, showcasing the relevance of individual patterns for the understanding of intonational contact.