The sound pattern of Standard Italian, as compared with the varieties spoken in Florence, Milan and Rome

Abstract

This paper is a condensed presentation of the phonetics and phonology of Standard Italian, compared to the most prestigious local accents, viz. those of Florence, Milan and Rome. Historically based on the Florentine pronunciation, and traditionally identified with it, Standard Italian is nowadays used by trained speakers such as stage actors and (but less and less so) radio and TV speakers. The present paper aims at depicting the most salient features of Standard Italian, still a matter of primary reference in language courses, comparing them with the characteristic features of the three most prominent local varieties, with which the foreign learner is most likely to be confronted. All traditional (and sometimes widely debated) issues of Italian phonetics/phonology are addressed in the most ecumenical setting possible.

An acoustic study on non-local anticipatory effects of Italian length contrast

“…Despite reported variation in the realization of the length contrast between Northern, Central-Southern, and Tuscany Italian speakers (cf. Bertinetto and Loporcaro, 2005), all speakers produced the length contrast in wordmedial position (see Table IV in Appendix A) by longer duration in geminate compared to singleton words and, more importantly for the current study, by longer duration of the word-initial consonant. The direction of the effect is in line with previous observations on lengthening of word-initial stops and fricatives in Japanese (Han, 1994;Idemaru and Guion, 2008), and of stops in Hindi (Ohala, 2007).…”

“…To create a strong test case, we included variation by using a varied set of word-initial and word-medial consonants, as well as speakers from different Italian regions (some of which are said to encode the length contrast more consistently than others, cf. Bertinetto and Loporcaro, 2005).…”

A formal account of the interaction of orthography and perception

“…An overview of the Italian singleton consonants is given in (1) (based on Bertinetto and Loporcaro 2005). The vowel system of Italian consists of seven phonemes | a e E i o O u |, all of which can occur in stressed position.…”

A morphophonological analysis of the velar insert in Italian verbs

“…It is usually assumed that Standard Italian displays seven vocalic phonemes in stressed syllables (Bertinetto & Loporcaro 2005;Krämer 2009;Maiden & Robustelli 2007;Nespor 1993;Rohlfs 1966;Serianni 1989;Tekavčić 1972 …”

“…In fact, native speakers from elsewhere than the abovementioned regions of Italy have different distribution of mid-vowels (see Bertinetto &Loporcaro 2005 andKrämer 2009: 51-52). According to Canepari (1979: §13.6, §13.7), this opposition is weakly distinctive and may appear in free variation for many speakers.…”