Prosodic variation and perceptive distinctness? An experiment with some dialectal varieties of Italy.

Prosody represents a fundamental cue in the geographical identification of many Italian dialectal varieties. Especially in the interrogative modality, prosody can vary according to specific areas. Previous studies, based on the identification of specific prosodic functions, confirmed the fundamental role played by prosodic cues alone. But what happens when prosodic variations are not so obvious? Starting from five dialectal varieties spoken in Italy, we tested whether details characterising dialectal varieties are perceptively distinguishable. We devised an auditory discrimination task with delexicalized stimuli reproducing prosodic cues only. The results show that participants are able to discriminate dialects irrespective of the amount of prosodic distance.