morphological? - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

(9) pre-vowel determiner with elision
["lazino] l’asino ‘the donkey’, ["lanno] l’anno ‘the year’
Non-native words select pre-vowel determiners without elision if they begin with /j/
and pre-consonant determiners if they begin with /w/; cf.
(10) [lo "jO…gurt] lo yogurt ‘the yoghurt’
[il "wiski] il whisky ‘the whisky’
Native words that begin with a glide select pre-vowel determiners with elision; cf.
(11) ["ljE…ri] l’ieri e l’oggi lit. ‘the yesterday and the today’
["lwO…vo] l’uovo ‘the egg’
This difference in determiner selection would be hard to state if glides in non-native
and native words were lexically represented in the same way.
iii. Diphthongs vs. hiatuses
Diphthongs are parts of the nucleus of a heavy syllable. They are marked as such in
the lexicon. All other VV sequences are hiatuses at the lexical level, i.e. lexically,
they are the nuclei of separate syllables; cf. (12):
(12) a. ["wO….vo] /u•O.vo/ uovo ‘egg’ (diphthong)
b. [kon."ti.nu.o] /kon.ti.nu.o/ continuo ‘I continue’ (hiatus)
iv. Diphthong gliding
The higher vowel of a diphthong is obligatorily glided.
(13) /u•O.vo/ → ["wO….vo] uovo ‘egg’
/pi•E.de/→ ["pjE….de] piede ‘foot’
v. Hiatus gliding
The higher vowel of a hiatus is always glided if it is preceded by an unvoiced
consonant; cf. (14):
(14) /dop.pi.o/ → ["dop.pjo] doppio ‘double’
Hiatus gliding is optional elsewhere (15), except in branching onsets (16): cf.:
(15) /ar.dE.zi.a/ → [ar."dE.zi.a], [ar."dE.zja] ardesia ‘slate’
(16) /ka.la.bri.a/ → [ka.la….bri.a], *[ka."la….brja] Calabria
The hypothesis about hiatus gliding was tested in a pilot study under the assumption
that hypothesis ii. (primary stress is assigned to lexical representations) is correct.
13 native speakers of Italian participated in the study. They fell into two groups, one
living in Mira, province of Venice, the other in Torino. Each group was
heterogeneous with respect to sex, age and geographical origin, but each group’s
members habitually communicated with each other in Standard Italian. The task
consisted in reading aloud a list of 44 words, including 14 fillers.
The test-words contained stem-final unstressed /i/, where /i/ formed a hiatus with final
vowel /a/ or /o/. They were chosen in such a way that the consonant immediately
preceding the /i/ varied. In accordance with the hypothesis, the relevant features were
[sonorant] and [voiced], which were supposed to pattern together because [sonorant]
implies [voiced]. (In addition, consonant length also varied in the test-material,
because it was suspected to play a role in the variation. We do not discuss this aspect
here.)
The data thus obtained were recorded and auditively analysed with respect to the [i]
vs. [j] variation. The analysis of the data confirmed the hypothesis:
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