Tones as Gestures: The Case of Italian and German

In this paper we investigate tonal alignment in peak accents in Italian and German. We show that timing differences across the two languages are systematic and result from crucial differences in phonological structure. The F0 rise in Italian is represented as a tonal high gesture, the onset of which is synchronised with the vocalic gesture. The German rise is the result of a sequence of tonal gestures, low and high, which compete for alignment with the vocalic gesture, resulting in a delay in the rise. A comparison of accented and deaccented syllables in German shows that the presence of a non-lexical tone does not affect the timing of consonantal and vocalic gestures.