Approximants and palatal laterals in Italian: the effect of pronunciation on phono-graphemic conversion in a group of young speakers of Turin

Abstract

Due to the articulatory proximity, Italian /ʎ/ and /j/ are confused by some speakers. The neutralization of the /ʎ/-/j/ contrast lets prevail [j]-like sounds. In order to investigate these phenomena, two classification tasks were proposed aiming to assess the incidence of the duration factor in distinguishing intervocalic segments. Furthermore, a reading task and a pseudowords dictation task were proposed. It emerged that the duration plays a significant role in the identification of /ʎ/ and /j/. Through the analysis of participants’ oral productions, two groups were identified: those who neutralize/ʎ/ and /j/ in pronunciation (NG: 30 %) and those who are able to distinguish them (DG). It emerged that the NG has greater difficulties in the graphophonemic conversion of pseudo-words than the GD. For the NG, it appears that different parameters (the quality of the sound and its duration) do not conflict in the recognition of [j] with non-prototypical duration, but that the speakers rely only on the duration of the sound.