Acoustic analysis of aspirated voiceless plosives in the dialect of San Giovanni in Fiore (CS)

Abstract

The goal of this study is the acoustical analysis of aspirated voiceless stops /t k/ preceded by /n/ produced by the speakers of San Giovanni in Fiore, a small town of Calabria. Even though dialectological studies include this village in the second dialectal area of the Calabrian region, aspirated voiceless stops realized by speakers of San Giovanni in Fiore contrast with this idea. In fact, its dialect comes to be more similar with the phonetic features (i.e. aspiration) of the areas of Catanzaro and Reggio Calabria. After the measurement of the durations of the stops elicited, the analytic section investigates the phenomenon of aspiration that forces us to reconsider traditional isoglosses in order to put San Giovanni in Fiore in its proper dialectological place.