La metafonia nell’italiano regionale di Sardegna tra rappresentazione fonologica e ortografica

The raising of /ɛ ɔ/ to [e o] when followed by /i u/ is a process characterizing Sardinian regional Italian. Recently, it has been observed that (pre)palatal consonants too trigger an analogous vowel raising. However, before a (pre) palatal consonant the vowel raising is not systematic. In this paper we present the hypothesis that, along with /i/ > [i], the diacritic > [Ø], which is employed to represent (pre)palatal consonants in the Italian orthography, is able to cause the mid-vowel raising. The orthographic influence hypothesis has been tested on Sardinian regional Italian original data collected through a reading task. Results of the perceptive, acoustic and statistical analyses indicate that the presence of the diacritic influences the preceding mid vowel quality in terms of raising