Il Raddoppiamento Fonosintattico in sardo medievale

Raddoppiamento fonosintattico (RF) is a consonant lengthening phenomenon that is observed at word-boundaries in different Italo-Romance varieties, Standard Italian included. RF is also a peculiarity of Sardinian. Sardinian RF is triggered by a few monosyllables that display a final coda in Latin (i.e., AD > a, ET > e, NON > no). This kind of RF originates from consonant assimilation. This paper aims to trace the origins of Sardinian RF through the analysis of the written evidence for consonant gemination in RF contexts in Old Sardinian texts, by showing which dialectal areas were more affected, which monosyllables induced RF, and which consonants were more often geminated. A linguistic explanation of the observed differences in Southern and Northern Sardinian texts will be proposed with reference to different phonological processes of the respective varieties.