Coarticulation vs Phonologization: Evidence from Southern Italo-Romance

Area of Science:

• Linguistics
• Phonetics
• Sociolinguistics

Background:

• Vowel-to-vowel coarticulation is a phonetic process where adjacent vowels influence each other's articulation.
• Metaphony is a historical sound change in Italo-Romance languages, involving vowel height changes triggered by suffixes.
• Understanding the interplay between phonetic coarticulation and phonological change is crucial for historical linguistics.

Purpose of the Study:

• To compare acoustic differences in vowel articulation between Campanian Italian and Mormanno Italian.
• To investigate the acoustic realization of phonetic vowel-to-vowel coarticulation versus phonologized metaphony.
• To analyze the transition from phonetic variation to phonological sound change.

Main Methods:

• Analysis of time-varying F1 (first formant) trajectories of vowels.
• Quantification of mutual information between stem and suffix vowels.
• Acoustic comparison of Italian dialects: Campanian Italian and Mormanno (Calabria).

Main Results:

• Campanian Italian displayed temporally localized coarticulation.
• Mormanno Italian exhibited a phonologized metaphony pattern with extended suffix influence.
• Reduced mutual information and suffix distinctiveness were observed in Mormanno despite stronger suffix influence.

Conclusions:

• Sound change involves the decoupling of acoustic cues from their original coarticulatory sources.
• Phonologized metaphony in Mormanno represents a distinct stage of sound change compared to simple coarticulation.
• The study provides acoustic evidence for the pathway from phonetic variation to phonological change in Italian dialects.