Glottalization at phrase boundaries in Tuscan and Roman Italian
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Jessica Di Napoli
Abstract
Phonological accounts of Italian traditionally exclude glottal consonants from the sound inventory of the language. However, a number of studies have reported creak in vowels in word-final stressed open syllables, suggesting the presence of a following glottal stop. The present study, which features acoustic analysis of read speech from four speakers of Tuscan and Roman Italian, investigates two possible sources of this glottalization: (1) a glottal consonant filling an empty mora posited for final stressed syllables, and (2) prosodic boundary marking. Results show no evidence of a glottal coda — glottalization occurs predominantly at phrase boundaries, with target vowels bearing stress and/or occurring in hiatus showing an increased rate of glottalization. A proposal is made for glottalization as prosodic boundary marking, where it serves to clearly define constituent edges and to block processes signaling cohesion between words, such as raddoppiamento sintattico and vowel coalescence, particularly where there is an intervening phrase boundary.
Abstract
Phonological accounts of Italian traditionally exclude glottal consonants from the sound inventory of the language. However, a number of studies have reported creak in vowels in word-final stressed open syllables, suggesting the presence of a following glottal stop. The present study, which features acoustic analysis of read speech from four speakers of Tuscan and Roman Italian, investigates two possible sources of this glottalization: (1) a glottal consonant filling an empty mora posited for final stressed syllables, and (2) prosodic boundary marking. Results show no evidence of a glottal coda — glottalization occurs predominantly at phrase boundaries, with target vowels bearing stress and/or occurring in hiatus showing an increased rate of glottalization. A proposal is made for glottalization as prosodic boundary marking, where it serves to clearly define constituent edges and to block processes signaling cohesion between words, such as raddoppiamento sintattico and vowel coalescence, particularly where there is an intervening phrase boundary.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgments vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
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Part I First and second language acquisition
- Devil or angel in the details? 3
- Effects of Spanish use on the production of Catalan vowels by early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals 33
- Cues to dialectal discrimination in early infancy 55
- Phonology versus phonetics in loanword adaptations 71
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Part II Prosody
- A preliminary study of penultimate accentuation in French 93
- Sentence modality and tempo in Neapolitan Italian 109
- Glottalization at phrase boundaries in Tuscan and Roman Italian 125
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Part III Segments
- Acoustic analysis of syllable-final /k/ in Northern Peninsular Spanish 151
- The phonetic basis of a phonological pattern 171
- The production of rhotics in onset clusters by Spanish monolinguals and Spanish-Basque bilinguals 193
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Part IV Methodology
- Secondary correlates of question signaling in Manchego Spanish 211
- Modeling prosody and rhythmic distributions in Spanish speech groups 239
- Categories and gradience in intonation 259
- Subject Index 285
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgments vii
- Editors’ introduction ix
-
Part I First and second language acquisition
- Devil or angel in the details? 3
- Effects of Spanish use on the production of Catalan vowels by early Spanish-Catalan bilinguals 33
- Cues to dialectal discrimination in early infancy 55
- Phonology versus phonetics in loanword adaptations 71
-
Part II Prosody
- A preliminary study of penultimate accentuation in French 93
- Sentence modality and tempo in Neapolitan Italian 109
- Glottalization at phrase boundaries in Tuscan and Roman Italian 125
-
Part III Segments
- Acoustic analysis of syllable-final /k/ in Northern Peninsular Spanish 151
- The phonetic basis of a phonological pattern 171
- The production of rhotics in onset clusters by Spanish monolinguals and Spanish-Basque bilinguals 193
-
Part IV Methodology
- Secondary correlates of question signaling in Manchego Spanish 211
- Modeling prosody and rhythmic distributions in Spanish speech groups 239
- Categories and gradience in intonation 259
- Subject Index 285
