Abstract
Despite the fact that Italian has been studied intensely for many years, the intricate relationship between its syllable structure and its metrical facts (weight and stress assignment) still poses a very significant formal challenge to previously published theoretical accounts. In this paper, we provide a novel account of Italian stress within the framework of Strict CV Metrics. We show that this approach most accurately captures the empirical data of the language, while providing a formally simple analysis which does not require feet, binary or ternary. The analysis is computationally simple and derives the ‘three syllable’ window effect without arbitrarily stipulating the foot-size of the language or overgenerating forms.
References
Absalom, Matthew, Mary Stevens & Hajek John. 2002. A typology of spreading, insertion and deletion or what you weren’t told about Raddoppiamento Sintattico in Italian. In Proceedings of the 2002 Conference of the Australian Linguistic Society. Available at: https://epub.ub.uni-muenchen.de/13551/1/66485.pdf.Search in Google Scholar
Antilla, Arto. 2002. Morphologically conditioned phonological alternations. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 20. 1–42. https://doi.org/10.1023/a:1014245408622.10.1023/A:1014245408622Search in Google Scholar
Bafile, Laura. 1999. Antepenultimate stress in Italian and some related dialects: Metrical and prosodic aspects. Rivista di Linguistica 11(2). 201–229.Search in Google Scholar
Bertinetto, Pier Marco & Michele Loporcaro. 2005. The sound pattern of Standard Italian, as compared with the varieties spoken in Florence, Milan and Rome. Journal of the International Phonetic Association 35(2). 131–151. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0025100305002148.Search in Google Scholar
Borrelli, Doris Angel. 2002. Raddoppiamento Sintattico in Italian: A synchronic and diachronic cross-dialectical study. New York: Routledge.Search in Google Scholar
Das, Shyamal. 2001. Some aspects of the phonology of Tripura Bangla and Tripura Bangla English. PhD dissertation, CIEFL Hyderabad. Available as ROA-493 from the Rutgers Optimality Archive.Search in Google Scholar
DeAgostini. 2005. Il dizionario elementare di Italiano. Available at: https://www.deagostinilibri.it/libri/il-dizionario-elementare-di-italiano.Search in Google Scholar
D’Imperio, Mariapaola & Sam Rosenthall. 1999. Phonetics and phonology of main stress in Italian. Phonology 16(1). 1–28. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0952675799003681.Search in Google Scholar
Fathi, Radwa. 2023. Vowel length and prominence in Cairene Arabic. In Florian Breit, Yuko Yoshida & Connor Youngberg (eds.), Elements, government, and licensing: Developments in phonology, 89–87. London: UCL.10.2307/jj.332955.15Search in Google Scholar
Faust, Noam. 2023. Metrically-conditioned syncope in Strict CV metrics. Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics 8(1). 1–29. https://doi.org/10.16995/glossa.8764.Search in Google Scholar
Grainger, Jonathan, Mathilde Muneaux, Fernand Farioli & Johannes Ziegler. 2005. Effects of phonological and orthographic neighbourhood density interact in visual word recognition. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology 58. 981–998. https://doi.org/10.1080/02724980443000386.Search in Google Scholar
Goedemans, Rob, Jeffrey Heinz & Harry van der Hulst. 2015. StressTyp2. Available at: http://st2.ullet.net.Search in Google Scholar
Golston, Chris. 2021. No stress system requires recursive feet. Catalan Journal of Linguistics 20. 9–35. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/catjl.333.Search in Google Scholar
Gordon, Matthew & Harry van der Hulst. 2020. Word stress. In Carlos Gussenhoven & Aoju Chen (eds.), The handbook of Prosody, 66–77. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Search in Google Scholar
Hajek, John & Mary Stevens. 2008. Vowel duration, compression and lengthening in stressed syllables in Central and Southern varieties of standard Italian. Proceedings of Interspeech 2008. 516–519. https://doi.org/10.21437/interspeech.2008-156.Search in Google Scholar
Hajek, John & Mary Stevens. 2011. Vowel duration in stressed position in Central and Northern varieties of standard Italian: A pilot study. In Wai-Sum Lee & Eric Zee (eds.), Proceedings of ICPhS XVII, 803–806. Hong Kong: City University of Hong Kong.Search in Google Scholar
Halle, Morris & William Idsardi. 2000. Stress and length in Hixkaryana (Optimality Theory). The Linguistic Review 17(2-4). 199–218. https://doi.org/10.1515/tlir.2000.17.2-4.199.Search in Google Scholar
Hayes, Bruce. 1995. Metrical stress theory: Principles and case studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Search in Google Scholar
Hayes, Bruce & Erica Cei. 2012. How predictable is Italian word stress? Handout of a talk given in the National Chiao Tung University.Search in Google Scholar
Idsardi, William J. 2013. Stress, computation and the Chomsky hierarchy. Talk at: M@90. MIT. This talk is an online video. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=in5IIrXQu4M.Search in Google Scholar
Kager, René & Violeta Martínez-Paricio. 2018. The internally layered foot in Dutch. Linguistics 56(1). 69–114. https://doi.org/10.1515/ling-2017-0037.Search in Google Scholar
Kaye, Jonathan D. 1992. Do you believe in magic? The story of s+C sequences. SOAS Working Papers in Linguistics and Phonetics 2. 293–313.Search in Google Scholar
Krämer, Martin. 2009. The phonology of Italian. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/oso/9780199290796.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Krämer, Martin. 2018. The Perfect Prosodic Word in Italian: Or fruit salad matters. In Hana-bana (花々): A Festschrift for Junko Ito and Armin Mester. Santa Cruz: UC Santa Cruz. Available at: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/3d75221c.Search in Google Scholar
Lampitelli, Nicola. 2011. Forme phonologique, exposants morphologiques et structures nominales: étude comparée de l’italien du bosnien et du somali. PhD dissertation, Université Paris-Diderot Paris 7.Search in Google Scholar
Lampitelli, Nicola & Shanti Ulfsbjorninn. 2023. A classless analysis of Italian nouns and their theme-vowel alternations. Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics 9(1). 1–36. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/isogloss.242.Search in Google Scholar
Larsen, Bergeton Uffe. 1998. Vowel length, raddoppiamento sintattico and the selection of the definite article in Modern Italian. In Patrick Sauzet (ed.), Langues et grammaire II and III, Phonologie, 87–102. Paris: Université de Paris 8.Search in Google Scholar
Lowenstamm, Jean. 1996. CV as the only syllable type. In Jacques Durand & Bernard Laks (eds.), Current trends in phonology: Models and methods, 419–441. Salford, Manchester: ESRI.Search in Google Scholar
Martínez-Paricio, Violeta. 2013. An exploration of minimal and maximal metrical feet. Ph.D. Dissertation. University of Tromsø.Search in Google Scholar
Martínez-Paricio, Violeta & René Kager. 2015. The binary-to-ternary rhythmic continuum in stress typology: Layered feet and non-intervention constraints. Phonology 32(3). 459–504. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0952675715000287.Search in Google Scholar
Martínez-Paricio, Violeta & René Kager. 2016. Metrically conditioned pitch and layered feet in Chugach Alutiiq. Loquens 3(2). e030. https://doi.org/10.3989/loquens.2016.030.Search in Google Scholar
Martínez-Paricio, Violeta & Francesc-Josep Torres-Tamarit. 2018. Trisyllabic hypocoristics in Spanish and layered feet. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 37. 659–691. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11049-018-9413-4.Search in Google Scholar
Neeleman, Ad & J. van der Koot. 2006. On syntactic and phonological representations. Lingua 116. 1524–1552. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2005.08.006.Search in Google Scholar
Passino, Diana. 2013. A Unified account of consonant gemination in external sandhi in Italian: Raddoppiamento Sintattico and related phenomena. The Linguistic Review 30(2). 313–346. https://doi.org/10.1515/tlr-2013-0010.Search in Google Scholar
Pepperkamp, Sharon. 2004. Lexical exceptions in stress systems: Arguments from early language acquisition and adult speech perception. Language 80(1). 98–126. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2004.0035.Search in Google Scholar
Repetti, Lori. 1991. A moraic analysis of raddoppiamento fonosintattico. Rivista di Linguistica 3(2). 307–330.Search in Google Scholar
Russo, Michela. 2007. La metafonia napoletana: evoluzione e funzionamento sincronico. Bern: Peter Lang.Search in Google Scholar
Russo, Michela. 2019. Stress shift, stressed enclitics and Raddoppiamento Sintattico in Southern Italian dialects. In Luciano Romito (ed.), Quaderni del Dipartimento di Linguistica Università della Calabria (30 anni di Laboratorio di Fonetica). Rome: Aracne.Search in Google Scholar
Saltarelli, Mario. 1983. The mora unit in Italian phonology. Folia Linguistica 17(1-4). 7–24. https://doi.org/10.1515/flin.1983.17.1-4.7.Search in Google Scholar
Saltarelli, Mario. 2003. A constraint interaction theory of Italian Raddoppiamento: Quantity restrictions and enhancement. Ms. University of Southern California.10.1075/cilt.238.07salSearch in Google Scholar
Samuels, Bridget. 2006. The structure of phonological theory. Ph.D. Dissertation. Harvard University.Search in Google Scholar
Samuels, Bridget. 2010. Phonological architecture. Oxford: Oxford University Press.10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199694358.001.0001Search in Google Scholar
Scheer, Tobias. 2004. A lateral theory of phonology. Vol 1: What is CVCV, and why should it be? Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.10.1515/9783110908336Search in Google Scholar
Scheer, Tobias. 2013. Why phonology is flat. Language Sciences 39. 54–74. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.langsci.2013.02.004.Search in Google Scholar
Scheer, Tobias & Peter Szigetvári. 2005. Unified representations for the syllable and stress. Phonology 22. 37–75. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0952675705000436.Search in Google Scholar
Sluyters, Willebrord. 1990. Length and stress revisited: A metrical account of diphthongization,vowel lengthening, consonant gemination and word-final vowel epenthesis in modern Italian. Probus 2. 65–102. https://doi.org/10.1515/prbs.1990.2.1.65.Search in Google Scholar
Thornton, Anna Maria. 1996. On some phenomena of prosodic morphology in Italian: Accorciamenti, hypocoristics and prosodic delimitation. Probus 8(1). 81–112.10.1515/prbs.1996.8.1.81Search in Google Scholar
Thornton, Anna Maria, Claudio Iacobini & Cristina Burani. 1994. BDVDB. Una base di dati sul Vocabolario di base della lingua italiana. Roma: Istituto di Psicologia del CNR.Search in Google Scholar
Ulfsbjorninn, Shanti. 2014. A field theory of stress. Ph.D. Dissertation. SOAS – University of London.Search in Google Scholar
Ulfsbjorninn, Shanti. 2017. Bogus clusters in Tuscan Italian and the theory of Sonority. In Geoff Lindsey & Andrew Nevins (eds.), Sonic signatures, 277–298. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company.10.1075/lfab.14.c16Search in Google Scholar
Ulfsbjorninn, Shanti. 2019. Do we jump on three, or is it one, two, three, go? Talk at Recursivity in Phonology below and above the word (RecPhon2019). Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB).Search in Google Scholar
Vaxman, Alexander. 2019. The Scales-and-Parameters approach to morpheme-specific exceptions in accent assignment. In Rob Goedemans, Jeffrey Heinz & Harry van der Hulst (eds.), The study of word stress and accent: Theories, methods and data. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.10.1017/9781316683101.014Search in Google Scholar
Yates, Mark. 2005. Phonological neighbors speed visual word processing: Evidence from multiple tasks. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition 31(6). 1385–1397. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.31.6.1385.Search in Google Scholar
© 2024 Walter de Gruyter GmbH, Berlin/Boston
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- A comparative syntax of the formal politeness markers in Japanese and Korean: -Mas/-Des and -(Su)pni
- Negative concord by phase: multiple downward agree and the parametrization of edge features
- Complex weight distinctions in Harmonic Serialism
- A footless stroll through Italian stress
- Proleptic objects as complex-NPs
- Specifier-to-head reanalysis: evidence from mandarin and Cantonese
- The interaction between modality and negation in Turkish
Articles in the same Issue
- Frontmatter
- Articles
- A comparative syntax of the formal politeness markers in Japanese and Korean: -Mas/-Des and -(Su)pni
- Negative concord by phase: multiple downward agree and the parametrization of edge features
- Complex weight distinctions in Harmonic Serialism
- A footless stroll through Italian stress
- Proleptic objects as complex-NPs
- Specifier-to-head reanalysis: evidence from mandarin and Cantonese
- The interaction between modality and negation in Turkish