Lenition and phonemic overlap in Rome Italian

The purpose of this paper is to offer acoustic evidence for an unusual phonemic contrast in Rome Italian. In our corpus, about half of all tokens of intervocalic /p t k/ are realized with uninterrupted voicing (both word-internally and across word boundaries). Furthermore, the voiced realizations of...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Phonetica Vol. 68; no. 4; p. 215
Main Authors:	Hualde, José Ignacio, Nadeu, Marianna
Format:	Journal Article
Language:	English
Published:	Switzerland 01-01-2011
Subjects:	Humans Italy Language Phonation Phonetics Sound Spectrography Speech Speech Acoustics Italy
Online Access:	Get more information
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Summary:	The purpose of this paper is to offer acoustic evidence for an unusual phonemic contrast in Rome Italian. In our corpus, about half of all tokens of intervocalic /p t k/ are realized with uninterrupted voicing (both word-internally and across word boundaries). Furthermore, the voiced realizations of /t/ and /k/ do not significantly differ from /d/ and /g/ in duration and/or degree of constriction (as acoustically determined). Phonemic contrast is maintained under substantial phonetic overlap. Regarding the labials, duration keeps /p/ and /b/ apart. Contrary to the universal tendency, it is /b/ that is considerably longer, due to complex diachronic facts.
ISSN:	1423-0321
DOI:	10.1159/000334303