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"Italian language Variation."
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Structuring variation in romance linguistics and beyond : in honour of Leonardo M. Savoia
Current theoretical approaches to language devote great attention to macro- and micro-variation and show an ever-increasing interest in minority languages. In this respect, few empirical domains are as rich and lively as the Italo-Romance languages, which together with Albanian were the main research domain of Leonardo M. Savoia. The volume covers areas as different as phonology, morphology, syntax and the lexicon. A broad range of Romance languages is considered, as well as Albanian, Greek and Hungarian, shedding new light on many classical topics. The first section focuses on morphosyntax, both in the narrow sense and with regard to its interfaces. The second section focuses on clitics and pronouns. The third section deals with a number of issues in phonology and syntax-phonology interface. The last section turns the reader's attention beyond formal linguistics itself and examines variation in the light of neurosciences, pathology, historical linguistics and political discourse.
eBook
Approaches to metaphony in the languages of Italy
This volume presents current work on a topic in Romance linguistics that still informs linguistic theory to this day: metaphony in the languages of Italy.Papers discuss fundamental research topics such as phonological opacity in the light of chain shifts, post-tonic harmony and consonant transparency, the role of morphosyntax in the typology of.
eBook
Advances in Italian Dialectology
This volume is a collection of grammar sketches from several Italo-Romance languages and dialects. Each chapter describes a salient phenomenon for a given language, based on novel data, as well as the state-of-the art knowledge on the phenomenon.
eBook
Cross-Regional Patterns of Obstruent Voicing and Gemination: The Case of Roman and Veneto Italian
Italian has a length contrast in its series of voiced and voiceless obstruents while also presenting phonetic differences across regional varieties. Northern varieties of the language, including Veneto Italian (VI), are described as maintaining the voicing contrast but, in some cases, not the length contrast. In central and southern varieties, the opposite trend may occur. For instance, Roman Italian (RI) is reported to optionally pre-voice intervocalic voiceless singleton obstruents whilst also maintaining the length contrast for this consonant class. This study looks at the acoustic realization of selected obstruents in VI and RI and investigates (a) prevoicing patterns and (b) the effects and interactions of regional variety, gemination, and (phonological and phonetic) voicing on consonant (C) and preceding-vowel (V) durations, as well as the ratio between the two (C/V), with a focus on that particular measure. An acoustic phonetic analysis is conducted on 3703 tokens from six speakers from each variety, producing eight repetitions of 40 real CV́C(C)V and CVC(C)V́CV words embedded in carrier sentences, with /p, pp, t, tt, k, kk, b, bb, d, dd, ɡ, ɡɡ, f, ff, v, vv, t∫, tt∫, dʒ, ddʒ/ as the target intervocalic consonants. The results show that both VI and RI speakers produce geminates, yielding high C/V ratios in both varieties, although there are cross-regional differences in the realization of singletons. On the one hand, RI speakers tend to pre-voice voiceless singletons and produce overall shorter C durations and lower C/V ratios for these consonants. On the other hand, VI speakers produce longer C durations and higher C/V ratios for all voiceless singletons, triggering some overlap between the C length categories, which results in partial degemination through singleton lengthening, although only for voiceless obstruents. The implications of a trading relationship between phonetic voicing and duration of obstruents in Italian gemination are discussed.
Journal Article
Vocabulary production in toddlers from low-income immigrant families: evidence from children exposed to Romanian-Italian and Nigerian English-Italian
The relationship between first and second language in early vocabulary acquisition in bilingual children is still debated in the literature. This study compared the expressive vocabulary of 39 equivalently low-SES two-year-old bilingual children from immigrant families with different heritage languages (Romanian vs. Nigerian English) and the same majority language (Italian). Vocabulary size, vocabulary composition and translation equivalents (TEs) were assessed using the Italian/L1 versions of the CDI. Higher vocabulary in Italian than in the heritage language emerged in both groups. Moreover, Romanian-Italian-speaking children produced higher proportions of TEs than Nigerian English-Italian-speaking children, suggesting that L1-L2 phonological similarity facilitates the acquisition of cross-linguistic synonyms.
Journal Article
Heritage speakers and contact-induced language change
This study investigates the role of heritage language (HL) speakers in language change, focusing on how they frame motion events compared to native monolingual homeland speakers. Language contact, particularly in HL contexts, is considered a significant factor in driving language variation and change. Drawing on research by Talmy (1975, 1983, 2007), we examine the alternation between verb-framed (VF) and satellite-framed (SF) constructions in Italian, which may be influenced by cross-linguistic contact with SF languages like German. The study reveals that Italian HL speakers produce significantly more SF constructions than homeland speakers, suggesting cross-linguistic influence from the majority language. Additionally, both groups exhibit sensitivity to the semantic properties of Manner verbs, with non-directional Manner verbs eliciting fewer SF constructions than directional Manner verbs. This study investigates the emergence of innovative linguistic forms in bilingual contexts, which may mirror broader patterns of contact-induced language change. Finally, it highlights the importance of exploring variability in both syntactic and semantic domains to better understand which structures are more susceptible to change.
Journal Article
Microvariation in the division of labor between null- and overt-subject pronouns: the case of Italian and Spanish
In Italian, null pronouns are typically interpreted toward antecedents in a prominent syntactic position, whereas overt pronouns prefer antecedents in lower positions. Interpretation preferences in Spanish are less clear. While comprehension and production have never been systematically compared in Italian and Spanish, here we look at the preferences for overt- and null-subject pronouns in the two languages using the same production and comprehension materials. Using an offline comprehension task with a group of Spanish and Italian speakers, we tested sentences where the type of pronoun (null vs. explicit) and position of the pronoun (anaphoric vs. cataphoric) are manipulated, to determine how context affects speakers’ interpretations in the two languages. With two production tasks, we measured referential choice in controlled discourse contexts, linking the production patterns to the differences observed in comprehension. Our results indicate microvariation in the two null-subject languages, with Spanish following the Position of Antecedent Hypothesis but to a lesser degree than Italian. More specifically, in Spanish, the weaker object bias for overt pronouns parallels with a higher use of overt pronouns (and with fewer null pronouns) in contexts of topic maintenance.
Journal Article
Experimental syntax and the variation of island effects in English and Italian
The goal of this article is to explore the utility of experimental syntax techniques in the investigation of syntactic variation. To that end, we applied the factorial definition of island effects made available by experimental syntax (e.g., Sprouse et al. 2012) to four island types (wh/whether, complex NP, subject, and adjunct), two dependency types (wh-interrogative clause dependencies and relative clause dependencies) and two languages (English and Italian). The results of 8 primary experiments suggest that there is indeed variation across dependency types, suggesting that wh-interrogative clause dependencies and relative clause dependencies cannot be identical at every level of analysis; however, the pattern of variation observed in these experiments is not exactly the pattern of variation previously reported in the literature (e.g., Rizzi 1982). We review six major syntactic approaches to the analysis of island effects (Subjacency, CED, Barriers, Relativized Minimality, Structure-building, and Phases) and discuss the implications of these results for these analyses. We also present 4 supplemental experiments testing complex wh-phrases (also called D-linked or lexically restricted wh-phrases) for all four island types using the factorial design in order to tease apart the contribution of dependency type from featural specification. The results of the supplemental experiments confirm that dependency type is the major source of variation, not featural specification, while providing a concrete quantification of what exactly the effect of complex wh-phrases on island effects is.
Journal Article
Infant-directed speech as a simplified but not simple register: a longitudinal study of lexical and syntactic features
Infant-directed speech (IDS) is a specific register that adults use to address infants, and it is characterised by prosodic exaggeration and lexical and syntactic simplification. Several authors have underlined that this simplified speech becomes more complex according to the infant's age. However, there is a lack of studies on lexical and syntactic modifications in Italian IDS during the first year of an infant's life. In the present study, 80 mother–infant dyads were longitudinally observed at 3, 6, 9, and 12 months during free-play interactions. Maternal vocal productions were subsequently coded. The results show an overall low lexical variability and syntactic complexity that identify speech to infants as a simplified register; however, the high occurrence of complex items and well-structured utterances suggests that IDS is not simple speech. Moreover, maternal IDS becomes more complex over time, but not linearly, with a maximum simplification in the second half of the first year.
Journal Article