Advances in Sociophonetics

146 Giovanna Marotta

Before presenting our proposal, a synthetic list of the phonological processes

which will be dealt with is given. According to what has been said in §3, they are:

1. gorgia toscana;


2. de-affrication of palatal affricates;


3. apocope;


4. rafforzamento fonosintattico;


5. s-affrication;


6. l-velarization (Pisa and Leghorn);


7. oxytone infinitives.

Each process will be discussed in relation to its distributional context and making

use of the sociophonetic parameters proposed.

5. Shape

The shape of a sociophonetic variation is simply represented by the description

of a given phonological alternation: the set of linguistic features and their context

of occurrence gives the process its shape. The phonetic indexes expressed by the

speakers’ behavior describe the shape of a sociophonetic phenomenon, inasmuch

they not only exhibit specific phonetic and prosodic details, but also make refer-

ence to the phrasal context and to the interface with the other levels of the gram-

mar. Examples of shape of the Tuscan sociophonetic phenomena listed above are

presented in this section.

5.1 Gorgia toscana

Gorgia toscana has the shape of an articulatory weakening of plosive consonants,

both voiceless and voiced, in postvocalic context, not only within the word domain,

but also in the phrase domain.^10 Some examples of the phenomenon are given in (1):

(1) SI fico ‘fig’, Tsc [ˈfiːho]; SI lato ‘side’, Tsc [ˈlaːθo]; pipa ‘pipe’, Tsc [ˈpiːφa]; SI piega

‘fold’ [ˈpjɛːɣa]; SI la casa ‘the house’, Tsc [la ˈhaːsa]; SI la torta ‘the cake’, Tsc [la

ˈθorta]; SI la pasta ‘the pasta’, Tsc [la ˈφasta].

10. The literature on the Tuscan gorgia is very rich. For a general survey of the topic, the reader is
    referred to Giannelli (1976), Giannelli & Savoia (1978, 1979–80, 1991), Agostiniani & Giannelli
    (1990), Marotta (1995), Giannelli & Pacini (1998). More recently, the phonetic and acoustical
    aspects of this phonological process have been investigated by Marotta (2001/2004, 2008).