Stress conditioned phonological process: a case study of Italian palatalization

Bowei Shao (1) , Philipp Buech (2) , Anne Hermes (2) , Maria Giavazzi (1)

1 ENS-PSL - École normale supérieure - Paris
2 LPP - LPP - Laboratoire de Phonétique et Phonologie - UMR 7018

This study examines the interaction between lexical prominence and palatal/velar consonants in Italian. The specific phenomenon of interest is the palatalization of /k/ in, e.g., 'cardiaci' [kar.ˈdi.a.tʃi] but not in 'ubriachi' [u.bri.ˈa.ki], which is argued to be conditioned by the position of /k/ relative to lexical prominence. The aim of the study is to uncover potential mechanisms that block palatalization in post-stress position, as in [u.bri.ˈa.ki]. The results revealed that the stressed vowel /a/ is more peripheral, i.e., hyper-articulated compared to unstressed /a/, which is more closed and fronted, especially towards its end. Further, the immediately post-stress consonants show longer closure durations compared to far-from-stress. We argue that the blocking of velar palatalization could be related to the longer closure duration in post-stress context, which is an articulatory by-product of the hyper-articulated stressed vowel. These findings are discussed within the predictions of the Task Dynamic model for the μgesture.

Mots clés: Lexical prominence; stress; Italian palatalization; μ-gesture; acoustics

Domaines: Linguistique

Bowei Shao, Philipp Buech, Anne Hermes, Maria Giavazzi. Stress conditioned phonological process: a case study of Italian palatalization. 20th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences (ICPhS 2023), Aug 2023, Prague, Czech Republic. pp.2189-2193. ⟨hal-04181603⟩