Vowel Elision in Italian as Spoken in Florence (FI) and Lecco (LI) Luigia Garrapa

1. Universität Konstanz Vowel Elision in Italian as Spoken in Florence (FI) and Lecco (LI) Luigia Garrapa Project A 25 Morphophonological Variation at Word Edges: Evidence from Romance University of Konstanz (D) / CRIL, University of Lecce (I) luigia.garrapa @uni-konstanz.de; luigia.garrapa@ateneo.unile.it 1. Vowel Elision Vowel Elision (VE) consists in the deletion of a word-finalvowel/affixbefore a word-initial vowel. In Standard Italian VE is said to apply obligatorily to the masculine singular determiners lo”the”and uno“a”, while the other Function Words (from now on Fnc) are said to be more or less likely to undergo VE (cf. Serianni 1988), as in (1a)-(3b): (1a) lo / uno albero ‘the/a tree’ → l’/ un albero (1b) la / una onda ‘the/a wave’ → la / l’, una / un’ onda (1c) gli amici ‘the friends’ → gli amici (1d) le amicizie ‘the friendships’ → le amicizie (2a) mi hanno detto ‘they have told me’ → mi / m’hanno detto (2b) ce lo avevo ‘I had it’ → ce lo / l’avevo (3a) dello anno scorso ‘of the previous year’ → dell’anno scorso (3b) alle amiche ‘at/to the female friends → alle amiche 2. Previous research Vogel et al. (1983), Agostiniani (1989) and Nespor (1990) have claimed that each Fnc shows its own peculiar behaviour towards VE. Thus, up to now, the general picture concerning VE in Spoken Italian seems confused. • Research Questions • How does VE actually work in [Fnc Lex] sequences in Fl and in LI? • To what extent do phonology and morphology interact? • Conclusions I • Dorsalvowels /a,o/ are more often elided than coronal ones /e,i/ . • VE is HIGHLY FREQUENT / PREFERREDwith word-final vowels/affixes which are morphologically totally underspecified or specified as [feminine]; •  Gender Morphological Specifications do not count for the application of VE; • VE is OPTIONAL with the preposition di in and with some word-final vowels/affixes specified as [plural] or [dative] (only in FI); • VE is RARE / IMPOSSIBLE with nearly all word-final vowels/affixes which are specified as [plural] and with all those which display 2 morphological specifications ([feminine] and [plural] or [feminine] and [dative]); •  Case Morphological Specifications and Number ones tend to block VE. • Materials and Methods • Our data come from two different sources: • the C-ORAL-ROM corpus of Cresti & Moneglia (2005) representative of FI; • an experiment, based on free speech and on a questionnaire (240 stimuli) for LI. • Our Hypothesis • VE is not random, rather it is conditioned by morphological markedness constraints interacting with phonological ones; • Following Lahiri & Reetz (2002), we assume that the 4 word-final vowels/affixes/a,e,i,o/ are morphologically underspecified for the features [masculine], [singular] and [accusative], see Tables 1-3; • The numberandtype of morphological specifications displayed by the word-final vowels/affixes is responsible for high frequent, optionaland impossible VE. • Optimality Theory Approach • The Constraints • (morphological + phonological; faithfulness + markedness ) • Morphological-Exponence: Do not delete the morphological specifications given in the input. • Max-WI:Every word-initial segment in the input must have a correspondent in the output. • Metrical-Structure:Do not modify metrical structure. • Onset: Syllables must have onsets. • Co-phonology 1 (C1, which supports VE) • Max-WI >> Onset >> Morphological-Exponence >> Metrical-Structure • Co-phonology 2 (C2, which militates against VE) • Max-WI >> Morphological-Exponence >> Metrical-Structure >> Onset • Results • Conclusions II • VE is not random, rather it is a morpho-phonological process and depends on morphology and markedness. • When deriving an output from an input containing a vowels sequence across word boundaries, speakers of FI select more often C1 than C2 (VE is very frequent in FI) while speakers of LI select select more frequently C2 than C1(VE is not so frequent in LI). • C1 and C2 account for optionality and variation in VE. Selected References Agostiniani, L. 1989, “Fenomenologia dell’elisione nel parlato in Toscana” in Rivista di Dialettologia Italiana 13: 7-46. Cresti, E. & M. Moneglia 2005, C-ORAL-ROM Integrated Reference Corpora for Spoken Romance Languages, Amsterdam, Benjamins. Lahiri, A. & H. Reetz 2002, “Underspecification Recognition” in Laboratory Phonology 7, 637-685, Mouton de Gruyter, Berlin, New York Nespor, M. 1990, “Vowel deletion in Italian: the organization of the phonological component” in The Linguistic Review 7: 375-398. Prince A. & P. Smolensky 1993, Optimality Theory: constraint interaction in Generative Grammar, Rutgers University and University of Colorado. Serianni, L. 1988, Grammatica Italiana. Italiano comune e lingua letteraria: suoni, forme, costrutti, Torino, Utet. Vogel et al. 1983, “La cancellazione di vocale in italiano” in Studi di Grammatica Italiana a cura dell’Accademia della Crusca, Firenze: 189-230.