In the L-AcT repertory, the question domain belongs to one of the sub-classes within the Direction Class. Question illocutionary types are defined as those activities directed to the addressee's linguistic behavior rather than seeking information acts. In other words, the definition considers that the linguistic behavior prompted by the question may not be pragmatically equivalent to giving a piece of information (Cresti, 2020).

Some intentional preparatory conditions are involved in the following questions: (a) the speaker's interest in the addressee, (b) the estimation of the background knowledge of the latter, and (c) the speaker's engagement in the linguistic interaction. Question types may vary depending on different degrees of the speaker's affective activation, in force, and type of linguistic behavior objective of the direction.

When performing a Total question, the speaker should in principle positively represent an eventuality. In so doing, he should at least assume its possible occurrence as a hypothesis. This seems a minimal intentional preparatory condition to keep the question as a meaningful speech act. Under this assumption, the linguistic behavior enacted by the speaker should not be defined as a seeking for information act since it is instead a request for the addressee's agreement on his hypothesis.

The condition is independent of the speaker's presupposition of the truth of his hypothesis and must hold in all circumstances (biased or unbiased). Being a state of mind, the presupposition of the truth of the hypothesis remains underdetermined, but the consistency of the hypothesis condition has been verified in all the corpus contexts for questions bearing a valley contour in Italian and final rising contours in French.

For instance, in Italian example (2), ELA is wandering where the village mentioned by LIA (Castiglion de' Pepoli) is, and she is uncertain about the place suggested by LIA (Sasso Marconi). Thus, based on her rough knowledge of the region, ELA hypothesizes that the latter is near Bologna, asking for confirmation of what she supposes. The prosodic movement of (2) in Figure 4 corresponds to the valley contour.

The French example in (3) fits with the same pragmatic description. MAR, a young man, explains that he is trying to become an artist. SOP hypothesizes that MAR is doing something useful in the meanwhile and asks for confirmation. According to the description reported in previous literature, the prosodic movement of (3) in Figure 4 corresponds to a rising contour in its high f0 level, aligned to the last vowel, necessarily tonic in French.

There are variants of the f0 range in prosodic contours in Italian and French. However, they bring only attitudinal meanings with no changes in the illocutionary type. For instance, in (4) and (5) MAR, the same French speaker of (3) performs the two questions with a rising contour at a lower f0 range (still over the glissando threshold).

Both questions may be, in principle, biased. In (4), a negative presupposition is probable—it is pretty challenging to be published for a young artist—while in (5), a positive presupposition is more probable—young artists get supported by the group of pairs. The f0 of both examples, reported in Figure 5, shows a final rise at a lower range than in Figure 4. The choice to perform an RC at a lower f0 range may convey mitigation in the force of the request connected to a courtesy attitude (Moraes and Rillard, 2014).

In the Italian example (6), ELA, the same speaker of (2), asks for confirmation of her hypothesis that American soldiers were still in the country at the end of the second world war. The presupposition is probable as in (2), but the valley profile, marked in Figure 5, is performed at a much lower f0 range. Its perceptual relevance is confirmed by the glissando values of each movement (falling and rising over the glissando and holding under the glissando). Keeping the illocutionary value request for confirmation, we can still perceive that the choice manifests the speaker's courtesy attitude toward the addressee.

The connection between attitudinal meanings and prosodic cues has been proposed to explain prosodic variations of questions found in corpus-based research beyond the Italian and French traditions. Kohler (2004), in his research on German syntactically marked questions taken from the Kiel corpus, finds a default correlation between the rising prosodic contour and the syntactic structure marked by the verb in the first position (Total questions) and the falling contour and the syntactic structure marked by wh- variables (Partial questions). In his proposal, the two prosodic contours bear different attitudinal meanings: the rising one expresses an orientation toward the addressee with interest and openness toward him, while the falling is oriented toward the speaker and asks for a response.

Dealing with the prosodic variation of syntactically marked questions (Total and Partial) in the corpus, he makes the hypothesis that during communication, the default link can be restructured, and each syntactic type can be found with the not-expected contour, because of the change in the relationship with the attitudinal meaning. Therefore, according to Kohler, the prosodic contour is a function of attitudinal meanings that apply to syntactic constructions.

The L-AcT perspective assumes that prosody is the direct manifestation of the illocutionary enactment, i.e., the prosodic contour is a function of illocution, which in turn shapes syntax. It is worth remembering that nearly 30% of utterances in spoken Romance languages are verbless (Cresti and Moneglia, 2005), and their pragmatic interpretation only results from the prosodic performance. The attitudinal meanings concern spheres of subjective (uncertainty, aggressiveness, and seductiveness) or social connotations (courtesy and social role), that can change the range of f0, speech rate, and quality of voice of a prosodic contour without altering its holistic form and the illocutionary value (Mello and Raso, 2012).

In the case just seen, the valley contour correlates with the illocutionary type of Request for confirmation. The f0 range of the contour can be at a lower level depending on courtesy attitude, but if the form changes, as we will see below, this is a function of the illocutionary type performed.

In conclusion, our corpus data does not verify the variation of a contour in correspondence either with a positive or negative presupposition (bias) (Savino, 2012; Vanrell et al., 2013; Portes, 2020) or with attitudinal nuances. On the contrary, the prosody is sensitive to the hypothesis made by the speaker that determines the valley form in Italian and the rising in French, performing RCs.

The occurrence of questions in spoken French bearing a rising-falling movement (implicative) on the last tonic syllable has been noted by Fonagy and Brerard (1973) and Rossi (1999). Because of their prosodic closeness, they have been referred to as declarative questions or even peremptory assertions.

The so-called nuance of the meaning of these contours has been the topic of corpus-based and experimental research in French (Portes and Lancia, 2017; Portes, 2020), and similar research has been conducted in Italian and English (Cresti and Moneglia, forthcoming; Rossano, 2010; Hedberg et al., 2017).

Corpus data are a significant source of information to characterize the pragmatics/prosody relation within Total questions. Both in Italian and French, we found recurrent pragmatic patterns which must be distinguished from those conveyed by RCs that are performed through a mountain contour.

A first pattern occurs in dialogic contexts in which the speaker repeats or reformulates a previous addressee's assertion in the immediate precedent dialogic turn or picks up in the common ground the object/argument of the question. For instance, in (7), f0 contour in Figure 6, while talking about the Cuban revolution, DAM questions a circumstance (à douze)—indeed, 12 people starting a guerrilla is remarkable—which DAV has just recalled.

In (8), f0 track in Figure 6, ELA reformulates the typical position of a happy cat—showing his belly—roughly recalled by LID.

In the above contexts, the information questioned is immediately at the disposal of the addressee. Crucially, the question is not supported by any speaker's hypothesis. In no circumstance, the above context can be paraphrased as the speaker makes the hypothesis of the occurrence of the given eventuality, asking the addressee for its confirmation. In other words, corpus data, both in Italian and French, positively show that this kind of Total question lacks the necessary intentional preparatory condition we identified in RC.

We can describe the pragmatic activity considering that the speaker assumes what is said (or is emerging from the context) and challenges the addressee to validate it through his linguistic behavior as an intersubjectively shared assumption. The act may be peremptory in connection to the greater or lesser speaker's interest in validating the ongoing linguistic exchange.

Even this kind of Total question cannot be defined as seeking for information acts since the information is at the disposal, and the speaker wants just a guarantee. We refer to them as Challenging questions (CHQ).

All questions sharing this pragmatic pattern, both in the Italian and French corpora, show a rising-falling contour which we holistically call mountain—in parallel to the term valley. It corresponds to a complex contour composed of a rising movement (over the glissando) and a rapid falling movement to the baseline (over the glissando).¹¹ Movements are by preference, aligned to the tonic vowel, or the falling movement can be placed on the post-tonic, as in the examples (9) and (10) below. The contour may be followed optionally by a holding movement on words after the nucleus within the root unit.

In parallel, no Total questions, performed in French through a rising contour or in Italian through a valley contour, have been found in pragmatic contexts lacking the speaker's intentional feature hypothesis on the eventuality.

Thus, positive corpus data corroborate the suggestion that the variation of the prosodic contour of the Total question is at least sensitive to the existence or not of an underlying hypothesis by the speaker, leading to differential pragmatic activities (RC or CHQ).

However, in Italian and French, a set of Total questions with a rising-falling contour does not entirely match the previous pragmatic description, i.e., challenging the addressee to validate information already given as a shared assumption. Nonetheless, it is also confirmed in these pragmatic contexts that the speaker does not make any hypothesis on what is asked.

These are probably those language usages that led authors such as Riegel and Pellat (1999) to propose the term injunctive questions. The (9) and (10), f0 tracks in Figure 7, are good examples:

In (9), NIC wants permission from his brother to keep a picture as a sign of affection. In (10), PEL pushes the seller to offer a different tour. Both utterances challenge the addressee by bearing a strong directive force instead of making a hypothesis. The answer is strongly requested to the addressee, and the interest of the speaker on the matter is even higher than in the validation context, thus fitting well with the term Challenging questions.¹²

The specific goal of Challenging questions varies and does not define the language activity. In (7) to (10), the speaker wants to validate a piece of information as a shared assumption; in (9), the interest is relative to the speaker's behavior (to keep the picture), and she asks for permission (linguistic behavior by the addressee). Conversely, in (10), the interest regards an action to be performed by the addressee¹³.

The pragmatic similarities between Challenging question groups may be summarized as follows:

In conclusion, Total questions find two main prosodic contours in Italian and French. The prosodic variation is sensitive to pragmatic features such as the presence or lack of the intentional preparatory condition regarding the speaker's hypothesis on one side and the force of the challenge toward the addressee on the other. If the hypothesis is present, the force is weaker, and the question enacts a Request for confirmation. If there is no speaker's hypothesis and the force is strong, the question enacts the Challenging illocutionary type. Prosody varies accordingly.

Partial questions can be defined as those interrogative utterances whose scope is a variable expected to be saturated in the answer. In Italian, they represent nearly 38% of questions. Their syntactic structures correspond mostly to verbal phrases that the Wh- interrogative morpheme precedes (chi, che cosa, quale, dove, quando, quanto, come, perché, and come mai)¹⁴. The morpheme can occur alone or at the beginning of the Comment unit.

Partial questions are properly seeking information acts and do not imply any hypothesis by the speaker on the proposition satisfying the query.

The prosody of Partial questions is a falling contour (over the glissando) starting on the tonic vowel of the variable, which can be characterized by a more or less rapid declination, depending on the height at the start, the length of the information unit, the speed of speech, and sometimes on stance. See, for instance, two WH questions performed by female speakers. (11) is introduced by dove (where) and is characterized by a neutral attitude. The falling movement, reported in the f0 track of Figure 8, starts at a middle height and declines slightly.

(12), still showing a falling movement, is more lengthened and starts from higher f0 values. The question seems characterized by an attitude of insistence.

In Italian, the only prosodic difference within Partial questions regards the performance of perché (why). In (13), this variable is realized through an upward movement that can be slightly rising (over the glissando), as in Figure 8. ¹⁵

Perché frequently occurs in isolation; however, other words can follow it, taking part in the question as a tail with no functional value. From a pragmatic point of view, perché questions are distinguished from other WHs because of their prosody and because they are expected to be saturated by an explanation rather than a noun or prepositional phrase.

The idiosyncratic prosodic performance of perché allows passing to the description of Open questions (OP), which is rarely considered in previous literature (Weisser, 2018). Its syntactic structure corresponds to a verb-less phrase (noun phrase, adverbial phrase, adjectival phrase, and verb nominalization) filling the Comment unit (13% of PQs).

In (14), f0 track in Figure 9, PAO performs a question (per quest'estate?), showing a continuous rising contour aligned to the last tonic vowel (over the glissando), optionally followed by holding movement on the post-tonic.

Although the question does not specify precisely what kind of answer is expected, it just seeks an explanation. The addressee cannot answer Y/N.

In (14), “for this summer” might be considered the topic of the Partial question, “how do you manage it?”. But this is not the case since the first phrase bears an illocutionary force, and it is a Comment that can be interpreted as an independent question. The difference is reflected in the prosodic performance since OPs, as in the prototype in Figure 9, show a continuous rising contour.

The continuous rising contour distinguishes from valley and mountain contours of the Total types and resembles the one found with perché. Maybe not by chance that perché too foresees an explanation as an answer.

OPs are filled by a verb-less phrase, as is frequent in Total questions but cannot be answered by Y/N. The only reason for it can be up to their specific prosody. For instance, (15), f0' tracks in Figure 9, shows that the two prosodic contours on the same proper name (la Pina) determine their different pragmatic interpretations. CLA wants to hear about a girl whose name she does not remember well. EST assumes that she is named Pina performing a Request for confirmation. CLA asks an open question on this subject.

The different contours of the same lexical word can be easily compared. While the first utterance shows the typical valley of RC, the second, the OP, is performed through a continuous rising contour.

The pragmatic function of OP can be summarized in the following conditions: a) as all WH, the question does not convey a speaker's hypothesis; b) it is genuine seeking for information activity; and c) it waits to be freely completed by the answer.

In French data, Partial questions represent nearly 26% of the total amount and are composed of the whole range of Wh- morphemes (comment, où, quand, quel, quoi, combien, pourquoi) but can also be headed by q'est-ce que/qui.

Wh- morphemes are distributed not only at the beginning of the Comment unit, as in Italian, but also in situ at its end and (only occasionally) within it. The most frequent distribution is at the beginning (nearly 65%) and only 25% is at the end. However, it must be stressed that the initial position is filled in 45% of cases by q'est-ce que/qui, lequel, quel/quelle, and pourquoi, that in our data do not find any other position. Therefore, the remaining Wh- variables are distributed fifty/fifty in the initial and final positions, which is prominent.

When the interrogative morpheme occurs at the beginning of the Comment, its prosodic performance corresponds to a slightly falling contour (over the glissando) starting from the tonic vowel of the Wh-. A slightly rising tail can optionally complete the movement, as in the f0 track of (16) in Figure 10.

In (17), the prosodic contour of the most common Wh- morpheme (comment), distributed in the first position, is consistent with this description (f0 in Figure 10).

When the interrogative variable is in situ, the contour is nearly flat or weakly rising on the morpheme, marked by a minimal reset, strong intensity, and/or lengthening (still over the glissando). The f0 track of example (18) shows how prosody works on “comment”.

Open questions also occur in French (13.7% of PQs). Their syntactic structure is verbless phrases. The question is expected to be freely completed in the answer by an explanation, as in Italian. Their prosodic performance is a continuous rising contour (over the glissando). It can be only roughly compared to the Italian prosodic performance, as verified in the f0 track of (19) reported in Figure 10.

Double questions, Alternative questions (both positive and negative), and Tag questions are performed within Illocutionary pattern structures, which require the distribution of the utterance in two pragmatic units (CMM) in a prosodic pattern. All types are well documented in both corpora (from 9 to 15% of questions) and vary similarly in the two languages, as pies A and B of Figure 11 show. ¹⁶

In Italian and French, Tag questions are composed of a first assertive CMM, shaped according to the prosodic variation allowed by the assertive Illocutionary types (Cresti, 2020), and a second CMM filled by a morpheme working as a tag unit. Without the tag unit, the utterance would not be considered a question. The morpheme directs to the addressee the previous assertion, which functions as a positive hypothesis, stimulating him to confirm it. From a pragmatic perspective, Tag questions are almost equivalent to weak RCs.

A restricted number of morphemes can constitute the lexical filling of the second CMM. In Italian: forse, vero, no, eh, and giusto; in French, hein, non, vraiment, and c'est ça. (20) and (21) show Tag questions in the two languages, where the more common lexical expression filling the tag label are, respectively, eh and hein. Their respective f0 track is displayed in Figure 12.

Prosody is crucial to enact the illocutionary role, which requires the morpheme to be a stressed vowel rising (over the glissando) or lengthened. This condition can be verified on corpus data. The morpheme eh in Italian and hein in French frequently also play a Phatic function, strengthening the previous assertion's force. In those cases, the morpheme is defocused and is performed at a lower f0 level (under the glissando).

Half of the Illocutionary patterns in Italian and French are Alternative questions: either positive or negative. (22) and (23) are, respectively, Alternative negative (ANQ) and Alternative positives of the Italian Dataset, while (24) and (25) are comparable French examples. Figure 13 presents their f0 contours.

In no case, the Alternative patterns are equivalent to the performance of one sole question since the interpretation of the utterance does not concern a question on the truth of disjunctive coordination, as it might be in “is it true that (chess pieces are white or black)?”.¹⁷ Each CMM bears an illocutionary force of question, but the actual request is up to their association within the pattern, even if, as sometimes happens, the disjunctive conjunction (or) is not realized.

APQ and ANQ have different semantic values. In ANQ, one sole proposition is questioned and, for this reason, can be answered Y/N. On the contrary, APQ requires a choice between two propositions and cannot be answered Y/N.

ANQs work as a Total question; if the answer is negative, the question is solved. In contrast, the positive response is insufficient and requires supplementary information. Although APQs cannot be answered Y/N, a negative answer is possible, but it denies both possibilities and is by preference integrated by additional information.

From a prosodic point of view, quite surprisingly, APQ and ANQ show the same prosodic pattern, which is also the same in Italian and French. The first CMM bears a rising movement (over the glissando) with a peak on the final tonic vowel. In Italian, the rising contour is followed by a hold (under the glissando) if the word is paroxytone. The second CMM bears a level contour composed of rapidly falling on the first tonic vowel, followed by a holding movement at low f0 values (over the glissando) spread on the subsequent syllables. This description roughly replicates the prosodic description of alternative constructions in French (Delais-Roussarie and Turco, 2019).

Although the semantics of alternative questions might be extensively treated, from corpus data that emerge on the pragmatic ground, both APQ and ANQ, to be meaningful, cannot imply a hypothesis by the speaker on the questioned alternative and cannot be interpreted as RC but rather function as CHQ.

Although virtually ignored in Italian or French grammar, Double questions (DBQ) are well testified in language usage. As with the other Illocutionary patterns, they split the question into two prosodic contours (CMMs). They were described by Fonagy and Brerard (1973) as a double-rising movement belonging to the same prosodic contour. They report that Dubois already considered it like a prosodic redundancy on a unitary content that could constitute a single interrogative sentence. However, this description does not fit with the speech performance since each CMM signals a distinct act.

Italian and French DBQ present different types. Still, the overall structure always consists of a first CMM performing a question and a second CMM restricting the first. For instance, French features Double patterns with either a WH or a Total question in the first CMM, as in (26) and (27).

From a prosodic point of view, the contour of the WH is strictly compatible with the overall WH model, showing a prosodic marking of the Wh- variable, which is placed mainly in situ, as the f0 track of (26) in Figure 14. The second CMM shows a level contour (over the glissando) spread over the sequence of syllables. The answer should satisfy the Wh- variable.

The prosodic pattern of (27), displayed in Figure 14, corresponds to the sequence of a rising contour on the last vowel, strictly compatible with French RCs in the first CMM and a level contour (still over the glissando) in the second CMM, as in (26). The answer is necessarily Y/N.

It is worth noting that it is hard to interpret the second CMM as an autonomous question. However, the unit is not defocused as it might be the case, in the L-AcT perspective, for an Appendix of Comment (Cresti, 2021). As Martin (2008, 2018) noticed discussing similar questions within the Macro-syntactic approach (Blanche-Benveniste, 1997), the second unit of a DBQ works as a postfix. It must be distinguished from both an independent noyau and a suffix unit. In other words, the high-level contour bears a functional value in French, working as a specification act within the Illocutionary pattern.

DBQ in our Italian sampling always corresponds to a first CMM performing a WH question, followed by a second CMM restricting its scope.¹⁸ Let us see (28).

Figure 14 shows that the prosodic contour in the first CMM of (28) is falling, matching the Italian WHs. In contrast, the second CMM fits with the contour assigned to RC (valley), with the falling part (over the glissando) on the last tonic vowel and a hold (under the glissando) followed by a rising (over the glissando) on the post-tonic. In (28), the second CMM saturates the Wh- variable, thus modifying the status of the first WH question, which becomes an RC and can be answered Y/N.

Despite the variation found in DBQ, which may correspond to WH (seeking information) and RC, we never found Illocutionary patterns working as Challenging questions. In other words, the restrictive role of the second CMM develops a mitigation effect.