197 research outputs found
How many oral archives are in your home? Piloting a new Tuscan census in the Gra.fo Reloaded project
In this paper, we describe the pilot phase of a new census of Tuscan oral archives promoted by the Gra.fo Reloaded project. Building on a long research tradition, the Gra.fo Reloaded census strives to take a step forward by a) updating the contents of previous similar endeavors; b) promoting contemporary initiatives to strengthen the oral archive research community; c) adapting well-established pretesting procedures of National census agencies to its specific context. 13 individuals of diverse disciplinary backgrounds were asked to fill in the census form while thinking aloud; then, they completed an Italian reduced version of the Questionnaire of User Interface Satisfaction (QUIS). The results make a solid argument for running similar procedures in census construction processes and being aware of the features of our survey tools
The Pisan Vowel System of Read and Semispontaneous Speech. An Exploratory Contribution
Speech style is an important factor with respect to vowel reduction, and the availability of larger and
more realistic samples of data allows the investigators to focus on connected speech processes. The
main goal of the analysis reported on in this paper is to investigate the dynamics of vowel systems
under speech style changes. Utterances of stressed vowels both in semispontaneous- and read speech
were analysed; the data came from the speech of two young subjects from Pisa, recorded in the AVIP
(Archivio delle Variet\ue0 di Italiano Parlato) project. Works with a similar experimental design are
available for Castilian Spanish (Poch-Oliv\ue9 & Harmegnies 1992, Harmegnies & Poch-Oliv\ue9 1992),
Belgian French (Poch-Oliv\ue9 & Harmegnies 1992), Portuguese (Delplancq et al. 1995-96), English
(Deterding 1997) and Italian (Giannini & Pettorino 1993; Poch-Oliv\ue9 & Harmegnies 1995). Duration,
F1, F2, F3 and F0 of nearly 700 vowel utterances were measured. The data collected were presented
in terms of F1/F2 diagrams on a Hz scale. As for duration, F1, F2, F3 and F0 sets of ANOVAs were
run to test the effects of the variable \u2018speech style\u2019 for the seven vowels /i e E a o u/. In order to
estimate how peripheral the vowels were, the Euclidean distance of each vowel from the centroid of
all vowels in both speaking styles were calculated, and statistical results of the values thus computed
for each vowel and speech style were presented. The acoustic size of the vowel systems in both
speech conditions was calculated: the space was largest in the read speech condition and smallest in
the quasi-spontaneous speech condition. The formant and duration variabilities were further observed:
a lowered differenciation of the sounds in the quasi-spontaneous speech was therefore noticed. The
formants frequencies were finally processed by means of discriminant analysis, which confirmed that
vowels in the F1/F2 space were more differenciated in laboratory- than in semispontaneous speech
Quantifying folk perceptions of dialect boundaries. A case study from Tuscany (Italy)
This paper aims to understand the contribution of geographical information in the perception of linguistic variation. A total of 813 mental
maps collected among young speakers from different cities in Tuscany have been analyzed via an open-access web dialectometric tool
(Gabmap). In particular, the study seeks to verify the role of geographic distance and the place of residence of the respondents in modeling
perceived variation. The relationship between dialect grouping as made by linguists and perceived taxonomies of sublinguistic areas is also
investigated. Results show that geographical proximity between mapped areas significantly predicts the perception of dialect similarity. Our
participants made their decisions looking at (1) a keen sense of spatial contiguity, and (2) the synchronic presence of linguistic differences
between the Tuscan subregions. Moreover, classification uncertainty grows when the mapped areas are very close to, or very distant from, the
participants’ places of residence. Methodological and linguistic perspectives of mental maps in folk linguistics are finally discussed
Vocali fiorentine e vocali pisane a confronto
Il contributo trae origine dalla disponibilit\ue0 \u2013 all\u2019interno dei progetti AVIP e API \u2013 dello
stesso materiale di parlato letto, sia per la variet\ue0 pisana, che per quella fiorentina, e trova la
sua motivazione nell\u2019esigenza di definire la posizione del vocalismo fiorentino attuale
rispetto al vocalismo delle altre parlate toscane, in particolare rispetto a quello della parlata
pisana, che \u2013 com\u2019\ue8 noto \u2013 presenta, insieme alla finitima variet\ue0 livornese, elementi
particolarmente tipizzanti (marcato abbassamento delle vocali toniche medio-basse). Il
confronto interdialettale diventa pienamente legittimo grazie alla tipologia del materiale
utilizzato e consente di superare alcuni limiti metodologici \u2013 peraltro gi\ue0 ampiamente
sottolineati in letteratura \u2013 insiti nei raffronti tra le diverse variet\ue0 dell\u2019Italia linguistica.
Per ciascuna parlata sono analizzati due locutori di sesso maschile (studenti
universitari); si forniscono i valori in Hertz delle prime tre formanti e della frequenza
fondamentale del vocalismo tonico, del vocalismo atono complessivo, di quello pretonico e
di quello postonico. La ricerca acustica intende valutare \u2013 anche attraverso opportuni test
statistici \u2013 se le vocali toniche e atone dei due sistemi linguistici occupino spazi acustici
simili; e intende confrontare i risultati ottenuti per il fiorentino con i dati di Ferrero et al.
(1978) e con i dati relativi all'italiano regionale di base toscana (corpus DIVA). Ad una
analisi di tipo quantitativo sono affiancate osservazioni sull\u2019area dei poligoni disegnati
dalle vocali. Viene affrontata infine la questione relativa alle erosioni timbriche in atonia in
entrambe le variet\ue0
Per una caratterizzazione acustica del clear speech
La ricerca prende in esame alcuni aspetti acustici relativi al passaggio dal
parlato \u2018normale\u2019 al parlato cosiddetto clear e affronta preliminarmente varie
questioni di carattere terminologico e metodologico concernenti le indagini
che si prefiggono di meglio comprendere questa modalit\ue0 d\u2019eloquio. I dati
analizzati provengono da due parlanti di sesso maschile, uno italiano (Pisa),
uno di lingua m\uf2or\ue9 (Ougadougou, Burkina Faso). Per il locutore pisano sono
stati osservati i valori relativi alla velocit\ue0 d\u2019eloquio e alla durata, in maniera
da poter verificare se il parlato clear sia complessivamente pi\uf9 lento. Per
entrambi i parlanti sono stati misurati i valori formantici delle vocali toniche e
l\u2019estensione dello spazio vocalico, in modo tale da appurare se esiste un
legame tra l\u2019estensione dell\u2019inventario vocalico e la maggiore o minore
tendenza verso il parlato clear
Looking for hidden speech archives in Italian institutions
The paper presents the aims and the main results of an on-line survey concerning speech archives collected in the fields of Social Sciences and Humanities among Italian scholars. A huge amount of speech archives is preserved among researchers: most of the resources are not accessible and legal issues are generally not addressed in detail. The great majority of the respondents would agree to storing their archives in national repositories, if any
Sull’insegnamento della pronuncia italiana negli anni sessanta a bambini e a stranieri
The paper analyses two orthoepy courses, one designed for children and one dedicated to foreign learners of Italian, dating back to the sixties, in the frame of the history of Italian pronunciation. The pronunciation of the Italian language has been heavily discussed by experts: the standard Italian pronunciation, based on the Florentine inflection, that can be found in textbooks and dictionaries is the result of a highly factitious norm that has not been adopted by the Italian-speaking communities. The inspection of the two orthoepy courses shows that the Italian standard diction was not even used in institutional publications. Further, the Italian pronunciation presented during the two courses is heavily impacted by the spelling and by the phonetic phenomena that would be widely spread in the following decades
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