Linguistic Studies and Essays

Vol. 61 No. 1 (2023)
Articles

Il trattamento di /w/ in posizione iniziale in italiano è influenzato dall’ortografia? Indizi dalla selezione dell’articolo maschile.

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  • Piero Cossu
Piero Cossu
Università di Pisa
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4454/ssl.v61i1.334

Published 2023-06-28

Keywords

  • diphtong,
  • article allomorph,
  • glide,
  • orthography
Copyright Notice

Abstract

Italian native speakers show two patterns concerning the selection of the singular masculine definite article allomorph before a glide /w/ or a sibilant + glide cluster /sw/. As far as Italian native lexemes are concerned, speakers select l’ and il before /w/ and /sw/, respectively. Differently, il and lo are selected before loanwords showing the same contexts in first position. We propose that the observed divergence is due to two syllabifications of the phonemic strings including a glide /w/. In turn, the different syllabifications depend on the graphemic representation of the glide: <u> in the native lexicon, mostly <w> in loanwords. It is thus proposed that the vocalic versus consonantal status of the grapheme representing the glide influcences the phonological representation of the glide itself. If /w/ is written as <u>, it occupies a nuclear position, if /w/ is written as <w>, it stands in onset position. We conducted an analysis on the vast Google Books corpus to corroborate this view. Moreover, a phonological analysis of Italian diphthongs is discussed.

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