Prosodic Analysis: An Italian case study

This study starts from the need to enhance the scientific knowledge on prosody features that characterize the human communication and in particular on the importance they have to attribute meaning to sentences. Starting from these considerations the focus of the paper is to distinguish the role that prosodic features have in distinguishing four different kinds of Italian sentences (statements, questions, commands, and exclamations). The methodology used for the analysis is the case study. 50 Italian users of the Institute of Research on Population and Social Policies (IRPPS) of the National Research Council of Rome participated in this study. Results of the case study showed different associations between the sentence types and tone types both for tonic and pre-tonic parts of the sentences.