Attrition and transfer between (primary) dialect and regional Italian

Vowel quantity and length in the Bologna urban varieties

Abstract

We present the results of three production experiments on stressed vowel lengthening in the linguistic repertoires of Bologna in order to ascertain: 1) if contrastive vowel length (CVL) is maintained in the urban dialect of Bologna as currently spoken within the town walls; 2) if the dialect’s contrastive length has been transferred as stressed vowel lengthening to the variety of regional Italian spoken in Bologna due to the close contact of the two reperoires; 3) if stressed vowel lengthening in Bolognese Italian is greater or comparable to that found in other varieties of Italian that miss any relationship with CVL in the related dialect, as Florentine. Results show that CVL is consistently maintained in Bolognese dialect, while the hypothesis of a transfer of CVL as stressed vowel lengthening in Bolognese regional Italian is not supported.