Re: Status of Italian rising

Roger Mills wrote:

> 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?)

[wO] can historically be the reflex of *O in open stressed syllables, but
this doesn't hold anymore: /O/ can show up in an open, stressed syllable
with no [w] contour: e.g. ['kO.sa] "what", ['O.ka] "goose", ['O.azi]
"oasis".

> 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/.)
quale [kwale], quei [kwEj], questo [kwesto], qui [kwi], cuore [kwOre]... so,
yes, Italian /w/ can appear before each and every vowel.

> 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/)
piano [pjano], pieno [pjEno], Piona [pjona] più [pju].

> >
> >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/ ?)
No: persuasivo [per.swa.'zi.vo], assuefarsi [as.swe.'far.si], consueto
[kon.'swe.to]. We do not need phonemic /j/ and /w/ in piano etc.: [j] and
[w] can be considered asyllabic vowels.

Luca