Talk:Syntactic gemination

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rafforzamento sintattico — Preceding unsigned comment added by Altenmann (talk • contribs) 00:30, 20 June 2007 (UTC)

Comment

The following item was commented in the article:

• In particular, the initial gemination may be conditioned by syntax. For example, in the phrase "La volpe ne aveva mangiato metà prima di addormentarsi" ("The fox had eaten half of it before falling asleep"), there is no gemination after metà, because prima is part of the adjunct, a sentence element phonologically isolated from the main clause within the prosodic hierarchy of the phrase.(ref> Nespor, Marina & Irene Vogel (1986). Prosodic Phonology. Dordrecht: Foris.</ref)
  • Comment: Most people will double the consonant in this case if the adjunct does not follow a comma!! — Preceding unsigned comment added by 151.63.170.49 (talk) — Preceding undated comment added 09:29, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

Quite right. Vogel herself has since revised the claim. The syntactic construction provides the opportunity for a slight pause; if there is no pause, however, which there often is not, raddoppiamento applies. The account in the text should be removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.134.21.253 (talk) 04:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

Any further comments? `'Míkka 16:16, 6 August 2007 (UTC)

• I am no linguistic expert, but as a native speaker from Central Italy (Rome) I take issue with the example of gemination "Come va?"; the gemination of "v" in this context is heard as a strong sign of a Tuscan accent (especially Florentine) that does not apply elsewhere in Italy; you can hear that when the name of the famous painter "Leonardo da Vinci" is pronounced, even in a formal context, here in Rome (quite often since it's the name of the main airport) as opposed to hearing the same name pronounced in Florence. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 160.80.88.3 (talk) 12:46, 15 October 2007 (UTC)

Try this: using Roman phonology of a register that allows "lenition" (la cagna will sound almost like la gagna, Caracalla will sound more like Caragalla), say "come canta bene!". What does the "c" of canta sound like? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.134.21.253 (talk) 04:20, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

That's an excellent test, unsigned. Unfortunately, the response is apparently endless dead silence. Very puzzling the people who take the time to comment, even contribute, and then are never heard from again.--47.32.20.133 (talk) 16:50, 11 July 2018 (UTC)

This applies to tuscan or roman accent

Hello, I'm an Italian speaker of Milan and I would like to certify that the article gives a bit of a wrong impression: the described phaenomena are features of some accents, not of the standard italian pronounciation: in fact you will not find one lombard, venetian or (for instance) piemontese person saying "vado a casa" as ['vado ak'kasa]: they'd say (with minimal variation about open or close vowels) ['vado 'a 'kaza] Giacomo Volli (talk) 15:19, 17 May 2009 (UTC)

I do not agree, sorry. Various Italian dictionaries use to report syntactic doubling as a phenomenon involved by certain words, so aside from local accents I think it must be considered as a standard feature. Compare e.g. the authoritative Dizionario d'Ortografia e di Pronunzia (DOP):

"la parola italiana che porta alla fine della trascrizione fonetica un segno di «più» vuole dopo di sé il raddoppiamento sintattico"[1]

"the Italian [entry] word with a «plus» sign after pronunciation spelling 'wants' (involves) syntactic doubling".

Furthermore, syntactic doubling explains compound words (da per tutto > dappertutto) that are doubtless standard Italian, and would not have been produced by Piemontese or Lombard or Venetian dialects (and, I assure you, not even by many non-Tuscan Central Italian dialects). --Erinaceus (talk) 21:05, 19 May 2009 (UTC)

It is indeed the case that Northern pronunciation in general (and Milan pronunciation specifically) has been slowly threatening to oust the standard Florence-based pronunciation of Italian over the last few decades, due largely to media domination. It is similar to the way that American English is encroaching on the long-established standards of pronunciation and spelling that exist in English. It's not unusual to hear Milanese claim that their dialectal ['vedrɔ lo'dzi:o setti'ma:na 'prɔssima] is more correct than ['vedrɔ llo'ttsi:o lasetti'ma:na 'prɔssima]. I wonder if they would go so far as to make a purely spelling-based distinction between e pure and eppure, or between tivvù and TV (I've never listened out for that one). — Chameleon 00:53, 15 July 2009 (UTC)

I suspect "andiamo a casa" is not the best example for various reasons, but raddoppiamento fonosintattico happens regularly in spoken language in Milan as well. In fact I'd consider it physically necessary if one were to pronounce the preceding words in the "standard" way (which is often not the case). --Nemo 11:05, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Well, you have to differentiate between the standard pronunciation of an "italiano comune" which is actually spoken by 3% of the population (cf. Canepari, L. (1983): Italiano standard e pronunce regionali, Padova.2nd ed.). This means that most of the speaker of Italian deviate from the (hyopthetic) norm. Nevertheless, the raddoppiamento exists in this (hyopthetic) norm. To claim that a large number of speaker (esp. in the North) do not have it does not mean that the raddoppiamento is not a feature in italiano comune. You want to describe differences of the regional Italians, you need to have italiano comune as a common reference.Don-M (talk) 12:51, 26 July 2009 (UTC) —Preceding undated comment added 12:51, 26 July 2009 (UTC).

The unsourced sentence on people who try to avoid the double consonants is probably mixing up with other cases. There is some stigma for gemination of the initial "b", for instance, and one sometimes jokingly emphasises the gemination (chefffai?, what the hell are you doing?), but I think it's excessive to state people actively avoid gemination in most cases. --Nemo 11:05, 31 March 2017 (UTC)

Other languages

Finnish displays a quite similar phenomenon, described in Finnish_phonology#Sandhi, a description of which should probably be added to this article, as has been done to the the Dutch version. brtkrbzhnv (talk) 17:59, 11 October 2009 (UTC)

Japanese has something similar, too. A few prefixes and suffixes almost always cause gemination of the following consonant (in prefixes) or the first consonant (in suffixes). For example, 真 ma (pure, true) + 丸 maru (circle) = 真ん丸 mammaru (perfect circle). 真 + 青 ao (blue, green) = 真っ青 massao (deep blue, ghastly pale). 根 ne (root) + 子 ko (child, offshoot) = 根っ子 nekko (root, stub, stump). In these examples, 真 ma causes the following consonant to geminate and the k of 子 ko is geminated in most cases. A few other words show similar behavior. 69.54.60.34 (talk) 08:22, 9 December 2010 (UTC)

Yes, it's strange, indeed, that this article concentrates only on Italian. Certainly the well-known cases of Finnish and Japanese should be added, but there are any number of others, too. --47.32.20.133 (talk) 16:06, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

The terms word-initial gemination and rafforzamento iniziale mentioned in the intro

I don’t think word-initial gemination and rafforzamento iniziale refer to syntactic gemination only, but also to the automatic purely phonolgical gemination of initial /dz/, /ts/, /ʃ/, /ɲ/ and /ʎ/ after vowels irrespective of what word precedes, as in lo zio /lod'dzio/, una scelta /'unaʃ'ʃelta/ etc. If others agree the article should be changed accordingly. LiliCharlie (talk) 15:52, 3 November 2015 (UTC)

The initial consonants of zio and scelta are actually /ddz/ and /ʃʃ/. Same for /tts/, /ɲɲ/ and /ʎʎ/, i.e. there is no phonemic singleton corollary. [lod'dziːo], ['unaʃ'ʃelta], [loɲ'ɲɔkko], etc. are projections of /ddz/, /ʃʃ/, /ɲɲ/, permitted by the vocalic context. In post-pause position phonetic geminates are blocked, so that in terms of phonological rule, post-pause ['dziːo], ['ʃelta], ['ɲɔkko] are degeminations. The length distinction shows up nicely in varieties that have the weakening rule /tʃ/ → [ʃ] between vowels; for example in the near-minimal pair [la'ʃeːna] la cena 'the dinner' vs. [laʃ'ʃɛːna] la scena 'the scene'. --47.32.20.133 (talk) 16:39, 6 July 2018 (UTC)

Regional occurrence -- Removed unsourced claim of substandard status in Italian

I've removed this text for unfulfilled longstanding requests for sourcing. Discussion here is invited, with appropriate sources.--47.32.20.133 (talk) 13:15, 17 October 2018 (UTC)

It is not taught in normal grammar programmes in Italian schools so most speakers do not recognize it as a standard feature of the language; indeed, many Italian speakers consider it to be a pronunciation error typical of Central and Southern Italy. Thus, northern speakers often do not try to acquire the feature, and other speakers try to avoid it in formal speech.

I've just removed it again. Sources were anecdotal at best. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 19:03, 23 December 2019 (UTC)

Removing it again. The claims need reputable sources.Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 22:39, 22 July 2020 (UTC)

Removed it again. At least one appropriate source is needed. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 15:30, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

...is an external sandhi phenomenon in [...] some Western Romance languages

This claim will be removed if no source is supplied. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 15:38, 22 July 2021 (UTC)

I've just removed the Western Romance claim, first flagged more than a year ago. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 06:17, 17 April 2022 (UTC)