182 Rosanna Sornicola and Silvia Calamai
In (2) both occurrences of the word lummeneka ‘Sunday’ have a diphthongized
[e] ([lum’mʌenəkə]), although only the second token can be analyzed as a pre-
pausal and [+Focus] noun phrase, while the first is a pre-pausal, circumstantial
unit which does not have the [+Focus] feature, for it is clearly an afterthought
uttered with the intonation contour of backgrounded information.(2) Speaker I: [kjamˈma o təˈlefənə iə / o ˈmjeləkə // a lumˈmʌenəkə] ‘it was me
who phoned the doctor, on Sunday’
Interwiever: [pekˈke / era e rumˈmenəka?] ‘why, was it on Sunday?’
Speaker I: [e: // er-e lumˈmʌenəkə] ‘yes, it was on Sunday’Finally, in (3) both intonational groups (two short clauses, the second being the
repetition of the first) have strong prosodic Focus on the pre-pausal verbal form
and are followed by a long pause. Yet only the second group has a diphthongized
vowel in the pre-pausal verbal form.(3) Speaker III: [paˈpa vuˈleva // paˈpa vuˈlʌva] ‘daddy wanted (it), daddy wanted
(it)’In Pozzuoli too the situation is rather composite. On the one hand, the variant [ʌi]
often appears in isolated and emphatic words (i.e. at the end of a tonal group), while
the variant [ʌ] often appears in pre-focal position in verbal forms (see (4) and (5)).(4) [kə ffaˈʃʌivə?] ‘what did he do?’
(5) [kə ppaˈpa diʃʌiva / iə vuˈlessə kamˈpa pə vvəˈrʌ a ˈfinə r a ˈgwɛrra] ‘that daddy
was saying: I would like to live to see the war end’On the other hand, in the same speakers [ʌi] does not appear only in focal con-
texts, and the variant [ɛᶦ], which otherwise appears frequently in non-focal con-
texts, can occur at the end of a tonal or focal group (see (6) and (7)).(6) [ˈkesta ˈsi a faˈʃɛᶦvənə] ‘this, yes, they did it’
(7) [si nun təˈnʌiv a paˈʃjentsja] ‘if he wasn’t patient’Other speakers from the same community show an even less advanced stage of
diphthongization, in which the variants [ɛʌ] and [ɛᶺ] appear in focal contexts
(see (8)).(8) [nu bbuˈlɛᶺvənə / nu bbuˈlɛᶺvənə / nu bbuˈlɛᶺvənə e nəsˈsuna maˈnjera] ‘they
didn’t want, they didn’t want, they didn’t want at all’.