24 Apr 2001

Dr Alexandra Vella (University of Malta)

This talk reports preliminary work on the realisation of the nuclear statement tune in two dialects of Maltese. Working on the intonation of Maltese within an AM framework, Vella's (1995) conclusion regarding the nuclear statement tune is that there is a tendency for early alignment of H* with the stressed syllable. Intuitively, early alignment of H* seems to be more marked in the two dialects under investigation. This investigation is therefore intended mainly at examining the implementation of the nuclear statement tune in the two dialects of Maltese. It is hoped that descriptive work of this sort could serve as the basis for further analysis of the prosodic characteristics of both Standard Maltese and its dialects.

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