Italian roots in Australian soil

Coronal obstruents in native dialect speech of Italian-Australians from two areas of Veneto

Authors

  • Cinzia Avesani CNR-ISTC Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione, Padova
  • Vincenzo Galatà Libera Università di Bolzano e ISTC-CNR, Padova https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1075-4984
  • Mario Vayra Alma Mater Studiorum, Università di Bologna e ISTC-CNR, Padova
  • Catherine T. Best MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, and School of Humanities & Communication Arts, Western Sydney University
  • Bruno Di Biase MARCS Institute for Brain, Behaviour and Development, and School of Humanities & Communication Arts, Western Sydney University
  • Ottavia Tordini Università di Pisa
  • Graziano Tisato CNR-ISTC Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche - Istituto di Scienze e Tecnologie della Cognizione, Padova

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.17469/O2101AISV000005

Abstract

We will discuss the maintenance of the heritage dialect coronal fricatives in the speech of Italian-Australian trilinguals (dialect/Italian/English) originating from North Veneto, Italy, as compared to the variability found in the productions of comparable Italian-Australian trilinguals originating from Central Veneto. Results on coronal fricatives’ distribution based on narrow phonetic trancriptions and on their acoustic characteristics based on spectral moments analysis show that the immigrants have generally maintained the fine-grained features of their dialect. After more than five decades of residence in Australia, traces of interlinguistic influences exerted by L3-English are evident in one speaker only. We consider both internal (linguistic) and external (sociolinguistic) factors for this difference in maintenance of first language speech features between immigrants from two geographical areas of the same province of origin in Italy (Veneto).

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Published

31-12-2015

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