Sara Lusini Yes / no question - marking in Italian dialects A typological , theoretical and experimental approach 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 authorâs 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 worldâs 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 .
