Italian intonation: an overview and some questions. Mariapaola D’Imperio Laboratoire Parole et Langage, CNRS – Universit´ e de Provence, FRANCE Abstract This paper presents a selective state of the art for the intonation of Standard and regional varieties of Italian, drawing especially from Neapolitan Italian data. Production and perception experimental data for this variety are employed to show some interesting interactions between focus, accent placement and accent type. The issues are presented within the autosegmental-metrical approach to intonational phonology. Points for future research are suggested. 1 Introduction Quantitative as well as qualitative data about the intonation of Standard and regional varieties of Italian are still scarce, and a consensus labeling system has only recently been proposed (Grice, D’Imperio, Savino, and Avesani in press) mainly based on Central and Southern variety data. Nevertheless, some of the phonological and phonetic work produced within the last ten years, framed within the Autosegmental Metrical (AM) ap- proach of intonational phonology (see Ladd (1996) for a review), appears to be very promising. Hence, the facts that I shall discuss here are mostly based on solid empiric inspection intended to test specific phonolog- ical models of intonation (Avesani 1990; D’Imperio 1995, 1997a, 1997b, 1999, 2000b; Grice 1995a; Grice, Benzm¨ uller, Savino and Andreeva 1995). Similar to Spanish (see Face, this issue, and Beckman et al., this issue), Italian is a stress accent language, in that metrical prominence is phonetically expressed through a combination of fundamental frequency ( ), intensity, duration and possibly other spectral cues. The use of duration as a stress cue, both in production (Far- netani and Kori 1990; Marotta 1985) and perception (Bertinetto 1980; D’Imperio 2000a) can be compared to the role of the lax/tense vowel opposition which characterizes the first level of the stress hierarchy proposed for English (Beckman and Edwards 1994; Beckman 1996). Stressed syllables are generally penultimate (Lepschy and Lepschy 1977; D’Imperio and Rosenthall 1999), though antepenultimate, final and preantepenultimate stress can also be found. In Italian, lexically stressed syllables can receive a pitch accent. The positional definition of nuclear accent offered within the AM approach has been the object of controversy in the description of Italian varieties (D’Imperio 2001). According to the standard AM definition, this is the last and most prominent accent of the intermediate phrase. Also, this is the accent immediately preceding the phrase accent (Pierrehumbert 1980). In Italian, instead, the nuclear accent can be defined as the “rightmost fully-fledged pitch accent in the focussed constituent” (Grice et al. in press). This alternative definition allows one to identify later accents within the same intermediate phrase, i.e. post-nuclear accents, which otherwise would not be allowed from a theoretical standpoint. Different pitch accents cue different pragmatic functions. In broad focus statements the nuclear pitch accent is a fall, generally analyzed as a sequence of a high target followed by a low one on the stressed syllable (H+L*) in all of the Italian varieties explored so far (cf. 2.1 for experimental evidence from Neapolitan supporting this analysis). The description of the question tune is instead highly dependent on the regional variety under scrutiny. While most Northern and Central varieties seem to be characterized by a terminal rise (i.e., a low nuclear accent followed by a rising phrase accent), Southern varieties exhibit a local rise on the nuclear accented syllable followed by a later fall. For instance, in the Neapolitan variety this tune has been analyzed as a combination of a L*+H followed by a HL phrase accent (D’Imperio 1997b, 2000b) (cf. 1.2.1). The location of pitch accents is not fixed in an Italian prosodic phrase and the focus structure can be entirely signaled by nuclear accent placement. However, late accent placement can lead to ambiguity of focus