Mary Baltazani

Drifting Without an Anchor: How Pitch Accents Withstand Vowel Loss

We offer an analysis of the influence exerted by segmental rules on the suprasegmental structure in the dialect of Ipiros Greek (IG). In particular we investigated how vowel deletion (VD) affects the phonetic realization of the L*+H pitch accent. Our data empirically establish that the H tone aligns much earlier when VD applies than when it does not. Furthermore, we show that there is a phonological contrast between the nuclear L+H* and the prenuclear L*+H which hinges on early versus late H alignment respectively. We demonstrate that the contrast between the L*+H and the L+H* pitch accents is not compromised by the earlier alignment caused by VD. In other words, intonational contrasts are not endangered by fine phonetic alignment variability within the same category.

Focus in Greek wh-questions

We present an analysis of multiple focus sentences in Greek. On an empirical level, we show that the current generalisation in the Greek literature that multiple focus is unavailable in Greek is too strong as it stands. What is unavailable is multiple maximal foci in sentences where one focused item has moved to the left periphery. We view the unavailability of multiple foci in such sentences as an interface mismatch between interpretation and phonology. Roughly, what is unavailable is not multiple focus but multiple sentence

Pragmatically determined variation in Greek wh-question intonation

This paper presents production data testing the analysis of Arvaniti and Baltazani (2005) and Arvaniti and Ladd (2005) according to which the default melody used with Greek wh-questions is L*+H L- !H% (showing a delayed accentual peak on the utterance-initial wh-word, a low stretch, and a final curtailed rise), with !H% sometimes being replaced by L%. Here it was hypothesized that the melodies also differ in pitch accent and are used in different contexts. Four speakers, two male and two female, took part in reading a varied corpus of questions in contexts that lead to the use of a wh-question either in order to seek information or in order to politely register disagreement (a function of wh-questions peculiar to Greek). Our results confirmed that there are two different melodies: L*+H L- !H%, with a delayed accentual peak and a final rise, and L+H* L- L%, with an early peak and no final rise. The former is used for requesting information and the latter when questions function as dissenting statements. In...