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Final vowel deletion in Italian and what it tells us about the interface of phonology, morphology and syntax| old_uid | 735 |
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| title | Final vowel deletion in Italian and what it tells us about the interface of phonology, morphology and syntax |
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| start_date | 2006/02/28 |
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| schedule | 11h-12h30 |
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| online | no |
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| location_info | salle 143 |
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| summary | Final vowel deletion, or „troncamento“, a phonological phenomenon of standard Italian, consists in the deletion of a word-final mid-vowel after a sonorant consonant, see (1). This contribution presents a study of troncamento in Florentine Italian which is partly based on data drawn from an extensive corpus of spoken Italian (cf. Cresti & Moneglia 2005), cast in the framework of prosodic phonology. Some studies have proposed that troncamento should be treated as an instance of phrasal allomorphy, similar to, e.g., French liaison. Others have claimed that it is a prosodic rule applying optionally in the intonational phrase. A closer look at the data reveals that in the Florentine variety of Italian the prosodic domain of troncamento is the phonological phrase, where effects of optionality arise from optionality of prosodic restructuring of phonological phrases. This is shown, e.g., by the observation that troncamento is subject to well-known syntactic and prosodic constraints on phonological phrase restructuring (Nespor & Vogel 1986).
Examples
(1) troncamento: deletion of word-final mid vowel (/e/ or /o/) after sonorant
a. andare via > andar via
go away „to go away“
b. sono contenti > son contenti
are-3PL satisfied „they are satisfied“
Selected references
Cresti, Emanuela and Massimo Moneglia (ed.)(2005) C-ORAL-ROM Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages. Book & DVD. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
Frascarelli, Mara (2000). The syntax-phonology interface in focus and topic constructions in Italian (Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory).Dordrecht: Kluwer.
Kager, R. and Zonneveld, W. 1999. "Phrasal phonology. An introduction". In Phrasal Phonology. Kager, R. and Zonneveld, W. (eds), 1-34.Nijmegen: Nijmegen University Press.
Nespor, Marina (1990).Vowel deletion in Italian. The organization of the phonological component. The Linguistic Review 7: 375-398.
Nespor, Marina and Irene Vogel (1986). Prosodic phonology. Dordrecht: Foris. |
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| responsibles | Nash |
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