| Popis: |
In this thesis I will outline and discuss vowel length related phenomena, giving first a comprehensive picture of interlinguistic variation (and therefore of the empirical data) with particular attention on northern-Italian dialects and with a focus on Friulian. Then I will present a theoretical account of these phenomena based on the formalization of Government Phonology (in its GP 2.0 version). In the first macro-section length-related phenomena will be presented, focusing on northern-Italian varieties. To account for these phenomena, Loporcaro (2015), Vowel Length from Latin to Romance will be discussed in detail. Loporcaro’s interpretation of northern-Italian length-phenomena is, in the most basic terms, to think of them as a long derivation from Latin contrasts based on vowel quantity. My interpretation of these data, on the other hand, is to see these phenomena as an independent and later process with respect to Latin vowel quantity contrasts (following Vanelli 2005). Furthermore, in my interpretation, vowel length phenomena are strictly interconnected with another process that interests northern-Italian varieties, namely final obstruent devoicing. In the second part of the thesis a Government Phonology account will be given. I will discuss in particular the possibility (argued in Pöchtrager 2006 and Kaye / Pöchtrager 2013) that some elements (viz. |ʔ| and |H|) are not really melodic in kind, but rather structural. This formalization allows, as it will be shown, for a non-arbitrary account of vowel length phenomena and their relation with final obstruent devoicing. |
