Local Speech Rate Differences between Questions and Statements in Italian

In this paper we address the issue of whether modality can be coded by cues other than pitch accent category in Neapolitan Italian. Specifically, our findings show that segmentally identical sentences uttered as either a yes/no question or a statement show different patterns of local speech rate. Specifically, while global utterance duration is the same in the two modalities, differences were found for individual phone duration, and mainly at utterance edges. These results are not compatible with a universal view of global rate differences between questions and statements and call for a more complex model of the interaction between segmental and suprasegmental contrasts.