In the description of the vocalic systems, it is sometimes necessary to account for unstable vowel qualities, most especially in cases where –either due to non uniform geographical diffusion or to the degree of variability involved – their representation proves particulary difficult. Depending on the quality of the recordings and on the skills of the transcriber, a vowel sound with unstable quality can be seen as a realization of a diphthongized nucleus, or else as a sound which is strongly conditioned by the surrounding sounds or which is subject to intrinsic local instability. In some cases, vowels with these characteristics may be further distinguished because of the consonantal characteristics which one may find at their edges, whereas in other cases they are definitely reanalyzed as vowel clusters or diphthongs. In this paper, we try to offer some grounds for an instrumental processing of unstable vowel qualities, by applying a paradigm which we already tested in previous studies and by proposing a new vowel breaking index. Original techniques of formant tracking have been applied to stressed vowels of a speech corpus from the Apulian dialect of Corato (Bari). This dialect has been investigated from a phonological point of view by some scholars but the representations we propose here for its vocalic system (and for the conditions under which the sound change seems to have occurred) are quite different. In particular, we account for a type of polymorphism which results from a specific kind of descending diphthongs known as broken vowels or «frangimenti» and may be easily observed in the common speech of this dialectal variety. We propose to discuss a data selection by showing that (1) different breaking processes may give rise to shared allophones and (2) some mergers suggest that there exists a correlation between these breaking processes and some specific patterns of prosodic (re-)organisation.
Osservazione e valutazione di traiettorie vocaliche su diagrammi formantici per descrivere il polimorfismo e la dittongazione nei dialetti pugliesi
ROMANO, Antonio
2013-01-01
Abstract
In the description of the vocalic systems, it is sometimes necessary to account for unstable vowel qualities, most especially in cases where –either due to non uniform geographical diffusion or to the degree of variability involved – their representation proves particulary difficult. Depending on the quality of the recordings and on the skills of the transcriber, a vowel sound with unstable quality can be seen as a realization of a diphthongized nucleus, or else as a sound which is strongly conditioned by the surrounding sounds or which is subject to intrinsic local instability. In some cases, vowels with these characteristics may be further distinguished because of the consonantal characteristics which one may find at their edges, whereas in other cases they are definitely reanalyzed as vowel clusters or diphthongs. In this paper, we try to offer some grounds for an instrumental processing of unstable vowel qualities, by applying a paradigm which we already tested in previous studies and by proposing a new vowel breaking index. Original techniques of formant tracking have been applied to stressed vowels of a speech corpus from the Apulian dialect of Corato (Bari). This dialect has been investigated from a phonological point of view by some scholars but the representations we propose here for its vocalic system (and for the conditions under which the sound change seems to have occurred) are quite different. In particular, we account for a type of polymorphism which results from a specific kind of descending diphthongs known as broken vowels or «frangimenti» and may be easily observed in the common speech of this dialectal variety. We propose to discuss a data selection by showing that (1) different breaking processes may give rise to shared allophones and (2) some mergers suggest that there exists a correlation between these breaking processes and some specific patterns of prosodic (re-)organisation.
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