In Italian, there is a length opposition for consonants (e.g., *pala* /ˈpala/ ‘shovel’ vs. *palla* /ˈpalla/ ‘ball’), but not for vowels. Vowel length in Italian is considered allophonic: vowels are short when unstressed and also in stressed position within a closed syllable (*Marte* /ˈmar.te/ [ˈmar.te] ‘Mars’), but long in stressed position in an open syllable (*mare* /ˈma.re/ [ˈ maː.re] ‘sea’). However, there are words (*corte* /ˈkorte/ ‘court’ vs. *coorte* /koˈorte/ ‘cohort’, as well as *re* /ˈre/ ‘king’ vs. *ree* /ˈree/ ‘guilty’) for which the orthographic form suggests a phonological distinction (Marotta, Sorianello, 1998; Gili Fivela, Bertinetto, 1999), in which duration may play a role. Italian speakers perceive the vowels in *coorte* and *ree* as heterosyllabic, as reflected in standard syllabification patterns (co-or-te, re-e), and thus as hiatuses. A first production study on these vowels (Santini, 2018) highlighted divergent articulatory strategies: the short vowel (*corte*) is articulated with greater apical peripherality than the hiatus (*coorte*). A second production study showed differences between hiatuses and allophonically long vowels in terms of duration and intensity, but only marginally so with respect to f0 variation, revealing considerable inter- and intra-speaker variation. Glottalization mechanisms were not investigated, and yet they may play a role. In this study, we investigate whether acoustic cues such as duration, intensity, f0 and the presence of glottalization play a role in reflecting long vowels and hiatuses, also considering the presence of morphological and morphosyntactic boundaries, given that recent literature has revealed sub-phonemic differences reflecting the morphological structure of words (e.g. Plag et al., 2016; Hedia, Plag, 2017). A corpus of 50 target words (10 for each of the 5 orthographic vowels in Italian a, e, i, o, u) was compiled for this study and recorded in a soundproof booth. Words include hiatuses or allophonically long vowels in the following five experimental conditions: 0) no morphological boundary (gli sciiti); 1) morphological boundary with and without hyphen (semiirti, semi-irti); 3) morphosyntactic boundary (degli inni); 4) lexical boundary (verdi istmi). The words were inserted into a frame sentence (e.g. Ho appena detto X“I have just said X”), along with other distractors, and presented to 5 different groups (each of 5 L1 Italian speakers) aged 20-30 years, resulting in a total of 2000 utterances recorded. A preliminary analysis of the data on Praat revealed various strategies employed by speakers: first, values of f0, duration, and intensity were different in the four groups; hyphenated words exhibited a greater degree of glottalization, compared to non hyphenated ones. Glottalization seems to be used to mark lexical boundaries.
Do morphosyntactic boundaries trigger glottalization? A production study on Italian
Federico Lo Iacono;Valentina De Iacovo;
2025-01-01
Abstract
In Italian, there is a length opposition for consonants (e.g., *pala* /ˈpala/ ‘shovel’ vs. *palla* /ˈpalla/ ‘ball’), but not for vowels. Vowel length in Italian is considered allophonic: vowels are short when unstressed and also in stressed position within a closed syllable (*Marte* /ˈmar.te/ [ˈmar.te] ‘Mars’), but long in stressed position in an open syllable (*mare* /ˈma.re/ [ˈ maː.re] ‘sea’). However, there are words (*corte* /ˈkorte/ ‘court’ vs. *coorte* /koˈorte/ ‘cohort’, as well as *re* /ˈre/ ‘king’ vs. *ree* /ˈree/ ‘guilty’) for which the orthographic form suggests a phonological distinction (Marotta, Sorianello, 1998; Gili Fivela, Bertinetto, 1999), in which duration may play a role. Italian speakers perceive the vowels in *coorte* and *ree* as heterosyllabic, as reflected in standard syllabification patterns (co-or-te, re-e), and thus as hiatuses. A first production study on these vowels (Santini, 2018) highlighted divergent articulatory strategies: the short vowel (*corte*) is articulated with greater apical peripherality than the hiatus (*coorte*). A second production study showed differences between hiatuses and allophonically long vowels in terms of duration and intensity, but only marginally so with respect to f0 variation, revealing considerable inter- and intra-speaker variation. Glottalization mechanisms were not investigated, and yet they may play a role. In this study, we investigate whether acoustic cues such as duration, intensity, f0 and the presence of glottalization play a role in reflecting long vowels and hiatuses, also considering the presence of morphological and morphosyntactic boundaries, given that recent literature has revealed sub-phonemic differences reflecting the morphological structure of words (e.g. Plag et al., 2016; Hedia, Plag, 2017). A corpus of 50 target words (10 for each of the 5 orthographic vowels in Italian a, e, i, o, u) was compiled for this study and recorded in a soundproof booth. Words include hiatuses or allophonically long vowels in the following five experimental conditions: 0) no morphological boundary (gli sciiti); 1) morphological boundary with and without hyphen (semiirti, semi-irti); 3) morphosyntactic boundary (degli inni); 4) lexical boundary (verdi istmi). The words were inserted into a frame sentence (e.g. Ho appena detto X“I have just said X”), along with other distractors, and presented to 5 different groups (each of 5 L1 Italian speakers) aged 20-30 years, resulting in a total of 2000 utterances recorded. A preliminary analysis of the data on Praat revealed various strategies employed by speakers: first, values of f0, duration, and intensity were different in the four groups; hyphenated words exhibited a greater degree of glottalization, compared to non hyphenated ones. Glottalization seems to be used to mark lexical boundaries.
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