An Information Packging View on Romanian Intonational Contours

Abstract

The paper presents an Information Structure model at the information packaging level, aiming to improve Romanian intonational contour interpretation. The model proposes a hierarchical view in utterance partitioning. Utterance tree contains nested binary contrast units (CUs). The elementary CU constituents consist of word(s) and related melodic contour(s) which give them IS functions at the information packaging level. The model defines two independent structural levels for describing CU structure: CU_predicate - CU_argument and CU_emotional - CU_rational element. The paper formulates rules for deducing nuclear accent placement within CUs and they are applied in describing the main types of Romanian intonational contours related to broad focus statement, information-seeking yes-no question and information-seeking wh-question contours.