Vowel length in Standard Italian and Northern Italian dialects

dc.contributor.advisorMontreuil, Jean-Pierreen
dc.creatorYoungblood, Jessica Lynen
dc.date.accessioned2010-05-21T19:23:35Zen
dc.date.accessioned2017-05-11T22:19:48Z
dc.date.available2010-05-21T19:23:35Zen
dc.date.available2017-05-11T22:19:48Z
dc.date.issued2007-05en
dc.descriptiontexten
dc.description.abstractIn this report, the phenomenon of vowel lengthening in Standard Italian and two Northern Italian dialects, Friulian and Milanese, is discussed. For each language, the facts of vowel lengthening are presented and analyzed in the framework of several theories previously proposed to account for the data. These include primarily derivational theory, moraic theory, and optimality theory. Vowel lengthening is analyzed predominantly from a synchronic perspective for Standard Italian, but for Friulian and Milanese, both diachronic and synchronic accounts are presented. Vowel length in Italian and Milanese is seen to result from bimoraic enforcement, a principle requiring that all stressed syllables be bimoraic. A constraint prohibiting long vowels in word-final position interacts with the principle of bimoraic enforcement in Italian. In Milanese, bimoraic enforcement responds to a lexical contrast in moraic and non-moraic codas. Vowels before non-moraic codas lengthen to create a bimoraic syllable, while those before moraic codas do not since those syllables are already bimoraic. In Friulian, on the other hand, historical vowel lengthening which resulted from compensatory lengthening following the apocope of final vowels has been reanalyzed as a synchronic process of compensatory lengthening resulting from loss of consonant voice following word-final devoicing.en
dc.description.departmentFrench and Italianen
dc.format.mediumelectronicen
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/2152/7462en
dc.language.isoengen
dc.rightsCopyright is held by the author. Presentation of this material on the Libraries' web site by University Libraries, The University of Texas at Austin was made possible under a limited license grant from the author who has retained all copyrights in the works.en
dc.subjectVowel lengthen
dc.subjectItalianen
dc.subjectStandard Italianen
dc.subjectFriulianen
dc.subjectMilaneseen
dc.subjectVowelsen
dc.subjectBimoraic enforcementen
dc.titleVowel length in Standard Italian and Northern Italian dialectsen

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