2026/01/01 by Anna Maria Stephanov
Psychology · Social Sciences · Computer Science · #Phonetics and Phonology Research #Linguistic Variation and Morphology #Linguistic Studies and Language Acquisition
paper · pdf · doi:10.1017/s0025100326101091
Abstract A well-known feature of many Italo-Romance varieties of the Veneto region is the weakening of intervocalic /l/, a phenomenon known as the ‘evanescent’ /l/. Here /l/ surfaces as [l] pre- and post-consonantally, as the glide [e̯] intervocalically between back vowels, and as normal empty set <mml:math xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:mnf="http://cambridge.org/core/manifest" xmlns:cup="http://contentservices.cambridge.org" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:m="http://cambridge.org/core/metadata" xmlns:core="http://cambridge.org/core" xmlns:c="http://cambridge.org/core/content"> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">∅</mml:mi> </mml:math> ∅ intervocalically next to at least one front vowel. While extensively documented descriptively and dialectologically, its phonetic properties remain underexplored. This study examines the phenomenon in Estense Veneto, a Central Veneto variety, offering fine-grained acoustic data that clarify both its phonetic and phonological profile. The results confirm that between back vowels, the glide [e̯] is realized with a marked F2 rise, supporting its characterization as a front segment. Crucially, however, [e̯] is found to be phonetically distinct from [j], being lower and less fronted. Consistent with Proctor’s (2011) characterization of dorsal gestures for ‘light’ laterals, the findings suggest that the glide is phonologically a front-mid segment and reflects the persistence of the original lateral’s tongue-body gesture, once the tongue-tip gesture is lost. In turn, glide deletion is shown to be phonetically conditioned by the surrounding vowels, with a threshold of articulatory salience below which the glide is elided. The evidence suggests that this gradient alternation of [e̯] with normal empty set <mml:math xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:mnf="http://cambridge.org/core/manifest" xmlns:cup="http://contentservices.cambridge.org" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:m="http://cambridge.org/core/metadata" xmlns:core="http://cambridge.org/core" xmlns:c="http://cambridge.org/core/content"> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">∅</mml:mi> </mml:math> ∅ may be entering a stage of conventionalization, but remains phonetic rather than phonological, challenging traditional allophonic accounts of [e̯] and normal empty set <mml:math xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink" xmlns:mnf="http://cambridge.org/core/manifest" xmlns:cup="http://contentservices.cambridge.org" xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:m="http://cambridge.org/core/metadata" xmlns:core="http://cambridge.org/core" xmlns:c="http://cambridge.org/core/content"> <mml:mi mathvariant="normal">∅</mml:mi> </mml:math> ∅ as two distinct allophones of /l/. Overall, the paper refines our understanding of lateral lenition in Veneto and its place in broader discussions of sound change.