Advances in Sociophonetics

148 Giovanna Marotta

function as a marker of gender and number in the case of noun declension and

of person and number in the case of verb conjugation. However, in the noun

phrases, other vocalic segments can be deleted too (-a, -o, -e), as results from the

examples in (5):

(6) SI dei bambini ‘some children’, Tsc de’ bimbi; SI mangiai molto ‘(I) ate a lot’, Ts c

mangia’ molto; SI poi vengo ‘I come after’, Tsc po’ vengo; SI il tuo fratello ‘your

brother’, Ts c il tu’ fratello; SI la sua sorella ‘his/her sister’, Ts c la su’ sorella; SI

le sue bimbe ‘his/her girls’, Ts c le su’ bimbe.

In formal terms, using a rule-based framework, apocope will have the following

shape:

(7) V [−stress] → [Ø] / V _ #

The only constraints applying on this kind of vowel deletion pertain to the pro-

sodic structure, since the target of the process has to be unstressed and preceded

by a vocalic nucleus.

It is worthwhile to underline the fact that apocope interacts with gorgia inas-

much it feeds the contexts triggering the spirantization of the stop consonants,

see examples in (8):

(8) SI arrivai tardi ‘(I) came late’, Tsc [arːiˌva ˈθardi]; SI hai capito? ‘Have you

understood?’, Tsc [a xaˈφiːθo]; SI hai preso il suo cappello ‘(you) took his/her

hat’, Tsc [a ˈφreːso il ˌsu xaˈpːɛlːo].

In other words, vowel deletion does not block gorgia because the output of the

process is still a context favoring consonant spirantization.

5.4 Rafforzamento fonosintattico

A typical feature of Tuscan dialects as well as of Tuscan Italian is the sandhi pro-

cess called rafforzamento fonosintattico (henceforth, RF). This consonant strength-

ening process takes place at word boundary after some functional words or after

a final stressed final vowel (Agostiniani 1992; Loporcaro 1997; Borrelli 2002). It

consists in the gemination of the initial consonant of the following word; e.g.:

(9) un tè [fː]orte ‘a strong tea’; mangiò [tː]utto ‘(s/he) ate everything’; io e [lː]ui ‘he

and I’; da [mː]ilano ‘from Milan’; una città [pː]ulita ‘a clean city’.

Central and Southern dialects as well as their respective varieties of Italian share

RF with the Tuscan varieties, although in non Tuscan varieties the distribution

of the process varies from place to place (Loporcaro 1997; Fanciullo 1997) and