People | Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione

Email:

cinzia.avesani@pd.istc.cnr.it

Telephone:

+ 39 049 8271823

Fax:

+ 39 049 8271825

Address:

Via Martiri della Libertà 2 - 35117 Padua - Italy

Group membership:

Speech, Language, and Neural Computations

Additional details

Profile

Position:

Senior Researcher

Cinzia Avesani is a speech scientist with a special interest in the prosody of the spoken language. She recieved her Perfezionamento (PhD) in Linguistics from the Scuola Normale Superiore of Pisa and worked as linguistics consultant at ATT-Bell Laboratories (NJ, USA).

Her main research interests focus on the phonological and phonetic aspects of L1 and L2 prosody, approached from a Laboratory Phonology perspective; on the study of heritage languages and on non-native and second language speech perception.

She has published papers on the phonetics and phonology of Italian intonation; on prosody and discourse structure; on the prosody-syntax interface; on the prosodic disambiguation of potentially ambiguous semantic and syntactic structures in a cross-linguistic perspective; and on prosody and information structure in L1 and L2. She worked also on timing and coarticulation, and on the articulatory bases of prominence within the frameworks of Articulatory Phonology and Task Dynamics; on non-native speech perception and, recently, on the maintenance of the native language in the speech of Italian-Australian immigrants.

She served as member of the scientic board in many international and national congresses, as occasional reviewer for speech journals as as Journal of Phonetics and Journal of IPA and as external expert for evaluating grant assignments for the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (German Research Foundation) and the Estonian Research Council.

She is the Editor of the open-access book series Studi AISV (Associazione Italiana di Scienze della Voce) and past Vice-President of the same association (2010-2016).

You can find the complete list of her publications here

Publications

2019

Does prosody meet syntax? A case study on standard Italian cleft sentences and left peripheral focus. The linguistic review

Maria Cristina Pinelli, Cecilia Poletto, Cinzia Avesani

Source: The linguistic review (Internet) (2019): 1â€“22. doi:10.1515/tlr-2019-2045, info:cnr-pdr/source/autori:Maria Cristina Pinelli, Cecilia Poletto and Cinzia Avesani/titolo:Does prosody meet syntax? A case study on standard Italian cleft sentences and left peripheral focus. The linguistic review/doi:10.1515/tlr-2019-2045/rivista:The

Perceiving non-native consonants that utilize articulators not employed contrastively in the native language: Revisiting PAM and the Articulatory Organ Hypothesis

Best, C. T., Avesani, C., Tyler, M. D., Vayra, M.

Source: , pp. 13â€“40. Aarhus: Aarhus University Press, 2019, info:cnr-pdr/source/autori:Best, C. T., Avesani, C., Tyler, M. D. & Vayra, M./titolo:Perceiving non-native consonants that utilize articulators not employed contrastively in the native language: Revisiting PAM and the Articulatory Organ Hypothesis/titolo_

2018

Sound maintenance and change: exploring inter-language phonetic influence in first-generation Italo-Australian immigrants

Tordini, O., Galatà, V., Avesani, C., Vayra, M.

Source: Il parlato nel contesto naturale /Speech in the Natural Context, edited by A. Vietti, L. Spreafico, D. Mereu, V. Galatà, pp. 73â€“94, 2018, info:cnr-pdr/source/autori:Tordini, O., Galatà, V., Avesani, C. & Vayra, M./titolo:Sound maintenance and change: exploring inter-language phonetic influence in first-generation Italo-Australian immigrants/titolo_volume:Il parlato nel contesto naturale /Sp

2017

Phonetic details of coronal consonants in the Italian spoken by Italian-Australians from two areas of Veneto.

Avesani, C., Galatà, V., Best, Vayra, M., Di Biase, B., Ardolino, F.

Source: Fattori sociali e biologici nella variazione fonetica/Social and biological factors in speech variation, edited by Bertini, C.; Celata, C.; Lenoci, G.; Meluzzi, C.; Ricci. I., pp. 283–306, 2017

2016

Attrito e transfer tra dialetto e italiano regionale. Quantità e lunghezza vocalica nel parlato intramurario di Bologna

Avesani, C., Vayra, M., Longo V.

Source: LA FONETICA NELL'APPRENDIMENTO DELLE LINGUE / PHONETICS AND LANGUAGE LEARNING, edited by Renata Savy, Iolanda Alfano, pp. 383–402, 2016

2015

Can the metrical structure of Italian motivate focus fronting?

Giuliano Bocci and Cinzia Avesani

Source: Beyond Functional Sequence, edited by Ur Shlonsky, pp. 23–41. New York: Oxford UNiversity Press, 2015

Different parts of the same elephant: a roadmap to disentangle and connect different perspective on prosodic prominence

Wagner P., Origlia A., Avesani C., Christodoulides G., Cutugno F., D'Imperio M., Escudero Mancebo D., Gili Fivela B., Lacheret A., Ludusan B., Moniz H., Ní Chasaide A., Niebuhr O., Rousier-Vercruyssen L., Simon A.-C., Simko J., Tesser F., Vainio M.

Source: Proceedings of the 18th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences, edited by The Scottish Consortium for ICPhS 2015, 2015

Disentangling and connecting different perspectives on prosodic prominence.

Petra Wagner, Antonio Origlia, Cinzia Avesani, George Christodoulides, Francesco Cutugno, Mariapaola D'Imperio, David Escudero Mancebo, Barbara Gili Fivela, Anne Lacheret, Bogdan Ludusan, Helena Moniz, Ailbhe Ni Chasaide, Oliver Niebuhr, Lucie Rousier-Vercruyssen, Anne-Catherine Simon, Juraj Simko, Fabio Tesser, Martti Vainio

Source: International Conference "Prominence in Language", Cologne, 15-17/6/2015

Italian roots in Australian soil: dialect as heritage language in first generation bilinguals

AVESANI, C., GALATÀ, V., VAYRA, M., BEST, DI BIASE, B., TORDINI, O., TISATO, G

Source: Il farsi e disfarsi del linguaggio. Acquisizione, mutamento e destrutturazione della struttura sonora del linguaggio/Language acquisition and language loss. Acquisition, change and disorders of the language sound structure, edited by M. Vayra, C. Avesani , info:cnr-pdr/source/autori:AVESANI, C., GALATÀ, V., VAYRA, M., BEST, C., DI BIASE, B., TORDINI, O., TISATO, G/titolo:Italian roots in Australian soil: dialect as heritage language in first generation bilinguals/titolo_volume:Il farsi e disfarsi del lingua

L'influenza della durata consonantica sulla coarticolazione della sillaba CV con gradi diversi di prominenza prosodica

Zmarich Claudio, Avesani Cinzia

Source: Aspetti prosodici e testuali del raccontare: dalla letteratura orale al parlato dei media, edited by Antonio Romano, Matteo Rivoira, Ilario Meandri, pp. 305–318. Alessandria: Edizioni dell'Orso, 2015

Research

My main research interests focus on prosody, approached from a Laboratory Phonology perspective. I have been working on timing and coarticulation, on the phonological and phonetic aspects of intonation, on prosody and discourse structure , on the prosody-syntax interface, on the prosodic disambiguation of potentially ambiguous semantic and syntactic structures, and on prosody and information structure.

I am interested in the articulatory bases of prominence, approaced from the viewpoint of Articulatory Phonology and Task Dynamics and, more recently, in non-native and second language speech perception and in the phonetic aspects of heritage languages.