Talk:Italian phonology

shouldn't this include a brief phonological history of the language rather than a description of how a young child learns the language's phonology TheHumanBreadstick (talk) 21:52, 12 July 2024 (UTC)

Good point. The article content is synchronic in nature, so I suppose it can be argued that historical phonology belongs elsewhere. In a similar vein, does childhood phonological development belong in an article describing the general phonological system? Debatable, at least. If kept, readers deserve an unambiguous label for the section, perhaps Childhood Phonological Development. Also called for is a check for factual accuracy. Claiming CVCV structure for mamma (taken from the cited article, where the phonemic transcription is given as /mamːa/) does not inspire confidence, suggesting as it does that both members of pairs such as fato-fatto, fico-ficco, casa-cassa (etc.) are CVCV, that muddle in turn raising questions of authenticity for other matters in the section. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 14:27, 13 July 2024 (UTC)

I have decided not to remove the section and just clear up the ambiguity in its title although it may warrant deletion TheHumanBreadstick (talk) 06:24, 15 July 2024 (UTC)

I came to Talk because the section "Childhood phonological development" seemed out of place for the main article on Italian phonology -- it's much too narrowly focused. It belongs in its own article. --Macrakis (talk) 22:55, 29 December 2025 (UTC)

The phonotactic image is wrong. It shows as a nucleus the sequence /i̯uo/ which is impossible in italian. The correct pattern should be /i̯u̯ɔ/ as in the word "aiuola".

If someone can, I think it should be changed. Italian.scientist.99 (talk) 13:33, 24 August 2024 (UTC)

The text says that only [s] occurs at the beginning of a word, but in my experience there are speakers who have expanded the rule "intervocalic /s/ = [z]" also to initial sandhi. For example, you may hear [lo zɔ] for "lo so". I can't say whether this is regional, generational or idiolectal. 92.73.31.113 (talk) 02:56, 1 January 2025 (UTC)

like its syllabification and codas Brawlio (talk) 17:29, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

Not specifically /Vbst/, although it can be gleaned more or less from the text addressing onset. The normal fate of /Vbst/ is /Vst/ (more generally, /VbsC/ > /VsC/), as in ostinato 'obstinate', asten- 'abstain', oscuro 'obscure'. Linguists tend to use sostrato for 'substratum', but substrato is used in some other sciences. Faced with the unnatural "semi-learnèd" structure, the most common realizations for those maintaining /b/ as [b] would likely be a very deliberate prescriptivist-approved pronunciation [subˈstraːto], or a somewhat less formal rendition with some perceptible hint of vowel between /b/ and /s/: [sub^əˈstraːto] ~ [sub^əsˈtraːto]. Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 21:23, 24 June 2025 (UTC)

"/ɲ/, /ʃ/, /ʎ/, /d͡z/, /t͡s/ are always geminate intervocalically" triggers an obvious question: if those are always geminate V_V, aren't they /ɲɲ/, /ʃʃ/, /ʎʎ/, /d͡zd͡z/, /t͡st͡s/, with phonetic length blocked post-C and in absolute anlaut?

Millions of native speakers naturally produce non-geminate phonetic [ʃ]/V_V in Luciano, bacio, la Cina etc., even in registers standard enough for university lecturing. With [ʃ] quite available between vowels, and the constraints on /ʃʃ/ → [ʃʃ] ([ʃː]) clear, what accounts for presumed /ʃ/ projecting as [ʃʃ] ([ʃː]) in lascio, biscia, la scena etc. rather than straightforward [ʃ]?

/ˈbiʃʃa/ → [ˈbiʃʃa] ([ˈbiʃːa]), for example, presents no such mystery -- and with no surface singleton available V_V, /ɲɲ/, /ʎʎ/, /d͡zd͡z/, /t͡st͡s/ are even clearer, while phonemic/structural/underlying geminates "explain" the call for the vowel of def. art. lo both historically and synchronically if immediately preceding masc. sing. (All this without wading into the quicksand of teleology.) Barefoot through the chollas (talk) 16:41, 3 August 2025 (UTC)