Chapter 6. Sound archives and linguistic variation 181
The influence of syntactic and prosodic factors on vowel movements has been
repeatedly observed for numerous languages. As for the first domain, a correlation
between diphthongization and [+Focus] syntactic positions has been reported in
the literature from various languages. As for the second, pre-pausal lengthening
appears to correlate with diphthongal movements: the final position in a phrase
seems to be the most favorable context for diphthongized variants. In the case
of Phlegraean [e], there seems to be a correlation between duration, pitch, loud-
ness and diphthongization, while there does not seem to be a strong correlation
between diphthongization and syntactic position associated to focus.
The data collected in Ischia show an extremely composite picture (Sornicola
2001, 2002). There is a non-negligible number of contexts in which – according
to the expectations – the vowels in non-pre-pausal words (typically finite verbal
forms that precede an object noun phrase) are not diphthongized; furthermore, a
certain number of contexts show the diphthongized vowel [e] in pre-pausal words
that have [+Focus] feature, as shown by the variants of the verbal form tenere ‘to
have’ in Table 5.
Table 5. Alternation between monothongs and diphthongs in Ischia.
subject no diphthongization diphthongization
speaker II [nui kə ttəˈnevan-a ˈtɛrrə // təˈnevanə a
ˈrrɔbba / ma ki n-təˈnevə ˈnjendə] ‘those
of us who had lands had possessions, but
those who did not have anything...’
[alˈlorə ˈdatəsə kə nnujə a ˈrrɔbba a
təˈnʌevənə // nunn-əmpurˈtavə] ‘then
as we had possessions we were not
interested in that’
speaker III[ˈkistə ˈlitʃə kə ˈttenə kanˈdine ˈlwogi e ˈffwokə
/ teˈnəvə a kanˈdinə / teˈnəvənə pproprjeˈta]
‘this (man) says that he has cellars, and
other riches [literally ‘places and fires’],
he had a cellar, they had properties’
[u ˈssalə ŋˈgapa ənd-a kukuˈttsɛλλa o
ttəˈnʌevə] ‘he was a sensible person’
(literally ‘the salt in his head, he got it’)However, there are also contexts at odds with expectations. In (1) the utterance
produced by the speaker is a sequence of three intonational phrases (the first two
are noun phrases, the third is a temporal clause) with the semantic function of enu-
merating the times when the speaker drank wine. The vowel [ɛ] in the first phrase
is diphthongized, while the two [e] in the second and the third are not, although
no significant difference in stress among these vowels can be detected and the three
syntactic and intonational units are separated from one other by a long pause:
(1) Interviewer: [kwann-ˈerə na ˈfɛstə?] ‘(you used to drink wine moderately)
when there was a celebration?’
Speaker I: [na ˈfɛʌsta // na rumˈmenəka // ˈkwannə vəˈnevən-aˈmiʃə] ‘(at) a
celebration, on Sunday, when friends used to come’