154 Giovanna Marotta
two (in the case of de-affrication) or one segment only. In the case of the oxytone
infinitives, the process concerns the morpho-phonological level: only a specific
morphological ending triggers the process of syllable deletion.
In conclusion, size refers to the scope of the sociophonetic variation with
respect to the overall system composed of the phonological categories and their
possible variants. We will show that size strictly interacts with thickness (see §7),
since the more the segments involved in a sociophonetic alternation, the greater
the relative awareness of the speakers.
Size may also refer to the effects of a sociophonetic process on the phono-
logical system. In a system-oriented model such as the one that we are propos-
ing, this second meaning of size may become even more important than the first
one, inasmuch as the phonetic outputs of a sociophonetic alternation interact
with the other elements belonging to the phonological inventory of the language.
Therefore, the same sociophonetic process can be assigned different values with
regard to the parameter of size. For instance, the process of s-affrication receives a
small size according to the first meaning, since it involves one segment only; how-
ever, according to the second meaning, it is defined by a very large size, because it
gives rise to the merging of two different phonemes (i.e. /s/ and /ts/) in a specific
context. This merging carries a potential cognitive confusion in the recognition
of categories by the speaker-listeners of Central and Southern varieties of Italian.
In conclusion, with regard to this second interpretation, the value assigned to
the Tuscan phonological processes considered so far will in general be very low
(with the only exception of s-affrication), since the surface sociophonetic varia-
tion does not conflict with the phonological categories. For instance, the output
of gorgia produces a set of fricatives which do not merge with any other existing
category. Va r i a t i s variandis, the same is valid for l-velarization, apocope and RF.- Thickness
While the two geometrical properties considered so far have absolute geometrical
values, i.e. they are independent from the observer, the third property, thick-
ness, entails both a physical and a perceptive dimension, inasmuch as it cannot
be evaluated without the specific point of view of the observer. Thickness can be
defined as the part of the solid behind its front section for a given subject who is
observing it.
In sociolinguistic variation, thickness should refer to the degree of control
the speaker may have on his/her production with reference to a given sociopho-
netic process. In other terms, the degree of thickness is directly proportional to
the percentage of occurrence of a sociophonetic process in everyday speech. In
general, the generalization in (16) can be assumed: