Re: Status of Italian rising

Mangiat wrote:
>
>Under the functional POV, indeed, only considering [j] and [w] vocoids
>lacking sillabicity not only when they immediately follow the syllabic
>sonority peak (falling diphthongs) but also when they precede it (rising
>diphthongs), would allow us to mantain the traditional simple explanation
of
>the conditions governing the allomorphy of masculine determinative article:
>[il] and [lo] both show up before contoids (under certain given conditions
>we may skip for our purposes);
>[l] shows up before all of the vocoids, both syllabic
>({ART}{unico}>['luniko]) and asyllabic ones ({ART}{uomo}> ['lwO.mo]).
>[u] and [w], as you may see, behave the same way, both as vocoids,
>determining the eligibility of [l] as article. We could consider them
>allophones of the same phoneme /u/, showing up in different syntagmatic
>contexts characterized by two different suprasegmental structure:
>input: /u.ni.ko/ vs. /uO.mo/
>output: [uniko] vs. [wOmo]
>When /u/ is a syllabic nucleus [u] appears; otherwise we get [w].
Just a thought:  in an abstract sense, the [wo] is just the open-syllable
allophone of the phoneme /O/, so in some sense perhaps the [w] isn't really
"there"? (This may be historically true, but isn't very convincing, is it?)
My little pocket dictionary gives only 3 words with uo-:  uomo, (all')uopo,
uovo; none with u plus any other vowel.  So something strange is going on
with [w-] in Italian.  (And of course Latin /w/ "v" shifted to Ital. /v/.)

Are there in fact any native Ital. words with [jV-]?  In my dictionary,
there are very few words with "iV-", most of them learned, like iato
'hiatus' or iodio 'iodine', ione 'ion', and of course io 'I'-- somehow I
doubt that these are pronounced [jV...] but rather with a distinct [i]
syllable of their own. So the " l' before glides" rule isn't necessary
there.  (And of course Latin /j/ usually > Ital. /dZ/)
>
>If we considered [j] and [w] approximants, the abovementioned rule should
be
>rewritten, getting a bit less straightforward:
>[il] and [lo] both show up before all of the contoids except the
>approximants /j/ and /w/;
>[l] shows up before all of the vocoids, but also before the approximants
/j/
>and /w/.
>This description would also introduce the distinction between 4 different
>phonemes, /i/, /j/, /u/ and /w/, where 2 (/i/ and /w/) would work.
I don't see the problem, and don't see that any unnecessary distinction is
being made-- you do need phonemic /j/ and /w/ in a few other places, after
all (as in piano, pieno, quanto, questo etc.-- isn't it true that all the
sequences of [w] plus vowels other than [o] occur only after /k/  "q" and
/g/ ?)
>
>In English, on the other hand, the conditions governing the allomorphy of
>indeterminative article show that [j] and [i] actually behave differently,
>and they should be considered different phonemes, the former contoid in
>nature, the latter vocoid:
Yes, Engl. definitely calls initial /j/ and /w/ "consonants" for purposes of
this rule. And that includes the unwritten [j] in words like "unique,
useful"-- a unique..., a useful... (And unlike Ital., Engl. has very few
[Cj...] (aside from [Cju...]) or [Cw...] words in the _non-borrowed_
vocabulary.

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