A Phonetic Investigation Into «Raddoppiamento Sintattico» in Sienese Italian

ISBN-13: 9783034310963 / Angielski / Miękka / 2012 / 346 str.

Mary Stevens

Opis

This book studies the linguistic phenomenon of -Raddoppiamento sintattico- (RS), the post-lexical lengthening in Italian of word-initial consonants following certain words, e.g. a k: ]asa at home . Linguists have long sought describe exactly where and why RS occurs. Based on naturally occurring speech recorded in Siena, Tuscany, this book provides detailed phonetic information on what happens when RS occurs as well as its interactions with other phenomena in natural speech such as lenition and pausing. This study relates this phonetic detail to existing phonological models of RS, vowel length and syllable structure in Italian. The most important subject of the book is the fine-grained description of stops in RS contexts, which are shown to be optionally preaspirated a phenomenon typically associated with only a few languages outside of Scandinavia. The book considers in detail the potential role of preaspiration in signaling consonant length in this variety of Italian and in doing so serves as a useful model for other laboratory phonology investigations into connected speech processes."

Spis treści

Contents: Introduction and overview - Background and framework for the phonetic analysis of RS - RS blocked and unblocked: an auditory perceptual (and descriptive acoustic) study - The phonetic realisation of stress-conditioned RS - The 'other' RS C-doubling: acoustic evidence of unstressed RS - The phonetic realisation of RS and WM geminates in Sienese Italian: the impact of preaspiration - Understanding RS: preaspiration and the potential overlap between RS and the Gorgia Toscana - Implications and conclusions.

O autorze

Mary Stevens was born in Tasmania, Australia and studied linguistics and Italian at the Australian National University in Canberra. She completed her PhD in 2007 within the School of Languages and Linguistics at the University of Melbourne. She moved to Germany in late 2009 and is currently an Alexander von Humboldt post-doctoral fellow at the Institute of Phonetics and Speech Processing in Munich.