@{publication-2049,
  year = {2013},
  publisher = {Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics (LOT)},
  isbn = {978-9-46093-098-0},
  url = {http://www.lotpublications.nl/index3.html},
  address = {Utrecht},
  school = {Netherlands Graduate School of Linguistics},
  title = {Yes/no question-marking in Italian dialects: A typological, theoretical and experimental approach},
  author = {Sara Lusini},
  note = {gefördert durch Lingua scholarship},
  abstract = {This dissertation provides an account of polar questions in Italian dialects from a typological, theoretical and empirical perspective. Both data from the existing literature and new data from the author’s fieldwork are included in this study. In the first part of this dissertation, it is shown that Italian dialects display a large number of typologically diverse yes/no question-marking strategies, as opposed to Standard Italian and Romance. The variation found in Italian dialects is surprising, given that they are closely related from a typological point of view. Furthermore, it is shown that several Tuscan, Central and Southern Italian dialects use a construction that poses a challenge for standard typological classifications of polar questions in the world’s languages. The second part of this dissertation focuses on the syntax and prosody of this yes/no question-marking strategy. A theoretical analysis is proposed in order to account for its syntactic properties. Although this construction includes two fully-inflected verbs, it is argued that it should be analyzed as a monoclausal utterance. A number of syntactic tests are developed to shed some light on its underlying structure. Further evidence for the proposed analysis comes from the results of empirical testing. A production
experiment was carried out to investigate the phonetic realization of this construction. The results of the experiment show that this construction patterns with specific prosodic cues, which unambiguously signal its monoclausal status. This study is of relevance to anyone interested in descriptive typology, theoretical syntax and experimental phonetics, as well as Italian dialectology.

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Chapter 1. Introduction
1. Introduction
1.1 The structure of this dissertation
Chapter 2. The typology of yes/no question marking in Italian dialects
1. Introduction 
2. Typological aspects of yes/no question-marking
2.1 Yes/no question-marking in the world’s languages
2.2 Yes/no question-marking in Latin and Romance
2.3 Summary and ad interim conclusions
3. The typology of yes/no question-marking in Italian dialects
3.1 The data
3.2 Interrogative word order
3.3 Interrogative verb morphology
3.4 QPs
3.5 Interrogative verb morphology + QP
3.6 Interrogative intonation
4. Discussion
5. Summary and conclusions
Chapter 3. Yes/no question-marking in Sienese
1. Introduction
2. The basic data
2.1 Restrictions on the occurrence of fare in Sienese yes/no questions
2.2 Comparing Sienese and Sicilian yes/no questions
2.3 On the optionality of fare
2.4 Brief comparison with other Central and Southern Italian varieties
3. The analysis
3.1 Establishing monoclausality
3.2 The syntactic structure of che fare questions
4. The diachronic development of yes/no questions
4.1 A working hypothesis
4.2 Stages of reanalysis
5. Conclusions
Chapter 4. Prosodic differences between yes/no questions and biclausal discourses in Sienese
1. Introduction
1.1 The problem
2. Production experiment
2.1 Methods
2.2 Analysis
2.3 Results
2.4 Statistical processing of the data
2.5 Discriminant Function Analysis
3. Conclusions
Chapter 5. Conclusions and issues for further research
Appendix 1 (Chapter 2)
Appendix 2 (Chapter 4)
References},
  keywords = {Fragesatz,Phonologie,Prosodie,Dialektologie,Sprachwissenschaft,Italienisch},
}
