morphological? - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

(6) antepenult Penult
iki Vki
iki Vki
transp. non transp. transp. non transp.
cúbi[t]i elásti[t]i austría[t]i sínda[t]i antí[k]i ubriá[k]i
Four words like opaco opacità, among which:
(7) cié[k]o cié[k]i ce[t]itá
‘blind-M SG’ ‘blind-M PL’ ‘blindness’
méndi[k]o méndi[k]i mendi[t]itá
‘beggar-M SG’ ‘beggar-M PL’ ‘beggarliness’
Data from Google (October 2007):
(8) opa[k]o opa[t]itá opa[k]issimo opa[t]issimo
1.600.000 273.000 63 259
cie[k]o ce[t]itá c(i)e[k]issimo c(i)e[t]issimo
4.000.000 623.000 63 -
As (8) shows, opacità is proportionally more frequent than cecità (a proportion of 5,8 vs. 6,4
when compared to the underived word). The proportion is not particularly striking, but two
facts may support this view: (i) cecità is very frequent in technical and medical texts, whereas
opacità belongs more to the ordinary language. The quantity of texts including the word
cecità is probably greater on the Web than in everyday life; (ii) other words derived from
opaco display palatalization (cf. opacizzare, opacificare), while cecità is the only derivate
from cieco displaying it: so to say, the “root” // seems more available than the “root”
//.
3. Stress assignment in Italian
Generally, the quantity-based Latin stress algorithm is taken as a base (but cf. e.g. Vincent
1988):
stress on the antepenult, if there is one, and the penult is light, otherwise
stress on the penult, if there is one
(9) réx ‘king’
rósa ‘rose’
romnus ‘Roman’ *rómnus
cucúrri ‘I ran’ *cúcurri
póplus ‘people’ *poplus
Loss of distinctive value for vocalic length. In Italian, heavy syllable = closed syllable. What
is proposed is a reduced version of (9) (Mioni 1993, Bertinetto & Loporcaro 2002):
stress on the antepenult, if there is one, and the penult is open, otherwise
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