144 Giovanna Marotta
Other phonological processes occurring in Tuscany, such as the rhotacism of the
lateral in pre-consonantal position, the palatalization of the lateral consonant,
the vowel raising and lowering in pre-tonic and post-tonic position (cf. Giannelli
1976), have a more marked vernacular status, belonging to the dialects and not to
the local pronunciation of Italian. Therefore, they will not be taken into account
in this analysis.
On the other hand, a special process occurring in the areas of Pisa and
Leghorn (North-West part of the region) has to be mentioned here, since it
exhibits a quite relevant sociophonetic status, with reference to speaker identity
as well as socio-cultural status. This process is the velarization of the lateral con-
sonant when geminated or in syllable coda position; e.g. bello ‘nice’ [ˈbɛɫ:o], alto
‘high’ [ˈaɫto] (Marotta & Nocchi 2001). The phenomenon has been only cursorily
studied in the previous literature on Tuscan varieties and dialects. Therefore,
considering both its probable sociophonetic status and its relative newness, we
have included the analysis of l-velarization in the present review, despite its
marginal geographical position.
In Figure 1, a map of Tuscany is presented, with the indication of the ten
regional districts. As is well-known, the varieties spoken in the Eastern area (basi-
cally, the district of Arezzo) and in the North-Western area of the region (the
district of Massa-Carrara) do not show the typical phonological features of the
Tuscan varieties, whereas they share phonological and morphological properties
with Central and Northern varieties of Italian, respectively (Giannelli 1976).- The model and its parameters
Before analyzing the main sociophonetic indexes characterizing the Tuscan va-
rieties, the descriptive parameters which will be used have to be identified and
defined. They will be discussed in terms of a metaphor, the metaphor of solids.
Sociophonetic variation can indeed be viewed as a solid body, i.e. an entity occupy-
ing a specific space in the domain of language and occurring in a delimited time.
As cognitive linguistics has been showing for many years, our metaphors
always start from a concrete concept, normally grounded on our sensorial and
perceptive experience. In this case, the solid metaphor allows us to conceive socio-
linguistic variation in a more concrete way, to ‘see’ the linguistic properties as
physical properties of objects having a physical nature. Being grounded in a con-
ceptual metaphor, the parameters assigned to sociophonetic indexes have to be
considered as descriptive more than theoretical and formal.
In the geometry of solids, starting from Euclid in ancient Greece, a solid is
defined as a geometrical entity with three basic dimensions: x, y and z. It represents