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