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Article published In: Linguistic Approaches to Bilingualism
Vol. 15:5 (2025) ► pp.601–631

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Intonation of polar questions in German-dominant heritage speakers of Italian

ORCiD logo with link | University of Konstanz
ORCiD logo with link | University of Konstanz
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Konstanz.

Published online: 16 April 2024
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lab.23031.kri
Abstract
In heritage language (HL) research, prosodic aspects of heritage speakers (HSs) speech have only recently started to receive attention and the results have been mixed. While some studies report cross-linguistic influence (CLI) for HL intonation, others consider it robust. The present study contributes to this debate and examines the intonational patterns of polar questions (PolQs) in the two languages of 30 HSs of Italian with German as majority language. This language combination displays overlapping and distinct intonational patterns in PolQs, making intonation potentially subject to CLI in bilingual language acquisition. The results of an elicited production task indicate that HSs maintain a systemic difference between their two languages. In German, HSs produce PolQs in a monolingual like manner. In Italian of HSs, both monolingual-like performance and CLI from German has been observed. Early Italian use is beneficial for monolingual-like outcomes in the HL.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Background
    • 2.1Polar questions in Italian and German
      • Italian
      • German
    • 2.2Intonation in heritage speakers
  • 3.Methodology
    • 3.1Participants
      • Proficiency
      • Early Italian use
    • 3.2Materials and procedure
    • 3.3Data treatment and statistical analysis
  • 4.Results
    • 4.1Language comparison of HSs
      • Nuclear pitch accents
      • Boundary tones
      • Nuclear contour
    • 4.2Group comparison in German and Italian
      • Nuclear pitch accents
      • Boundary tones
      • Nuclear contours
    • 4.3Effects of proficiency and Italian use during early childhood
  • 5.Discussion
    • 5.1Intonational patterns in the early acquired languages
    • 5.2HSs’ intonational patterns in comparison to monolinguals
    • 5.3Effects of proficiency and early language use
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Competing interests
  • Data availability
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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