Italian vowel paragoge in loanword adaptation: phonological analysis of the Roman variety of Standard Italian

• Autores: Olga Broniś
• Localización: Italian journal of linguistics, ISSN 1120-2726, Vol. 28, Nº. 2, 2016, págs. 25-68
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This paper investigates the phonological adaptation of consonant-final loanwords recently borrowed into Italian. The analysis focuses on the examination of Italian vowel paragoge (i.e., word-final vowel epenthesis) which occurs with some of these loans. The data used in the analysis come from a self-designed field study, carried out in Rome on the local variety of Standard Italian. The phonological analysis of the data leads to the formulation of the following descriptive generalizations. Consonant-final loanwords adapted into Italian undergo vowel paragoge for two independent reasons. First, paragoge applies in all loanwords which end in a consonantal cluster, irrespective of their stress pattern. In this group, vowel epenthesis is employed as a repair strategy to salvage an extrasyllabic consonant. Second, paragoge is applicable in loanwords ending with a single consonant provided their stem-final syllable is stressed. Here the process applies to avoid the adaptation of words with a highly marked ultimate stress. The insertion of a word-final vowel creates an additional syllable, which leads to the emergence of a form with an unmarked penultimate stress.