Abstract
SoPhISM (The SocioPhonetics of verbal Interaction: Sicilian Multimodal corpus) is an acoustic and articulatory sociophonetic corpus focused on whithin-speaker variation as a function of stylistic/communicative factors. The corpus is particularly intended for the study of rhotics as a sociolinguistic variable in the production of Sicilian speakers. Rhotics are analyzed according to the distinction between single-phase and multiple-phase rhotics along with the presence of constriction and aperture articulatory phases. Based on these parameters, the annotation protocol seeks to classify rhotic variants within a sufficiently granular, but internally consistent, phonetic perspective. The proposed descriptive parameters allow for the discussion of atypical realizations in terms of phonetic derivations (or simplifications) of typical closure–aperture sequences. The distribution of fricative variants in the speech repertoire of one speaker and his interlocutors shows the potential provided by SoPhISM for sociophonetic variation to be studied at the ‘micro’ level of individual speaker’s idiolects.
Highlights
Within the variety of “dialect/standard constellations” (Auer, 2005) currently emerging in Europe, Italy appears to be a very peculiar linguistic landscape
SoPhISM is an acoustic and articulatory sociophonetic corpus focused on intra-speaker variation as a function of language variety and stylistic/communicative factors
Since the research project based on SoPhISM is still in progress, the analysis proposed here is intended to show the potential of the articulatory sociophonetic approach and to serve as a reminder of how complicated a small dataset of phonetic data can be
Summary
Within the variety of “dialect/standard constellations” (Auer, 2005) currently emerging in Europe, Italy appears to be a very peculiar linguistic landscape. The dynamics of dialect/standard contact (including phenomena of demotization and de-/re-standardization; Coupland and Kristiansen, 2011; Ammon, 2003; Berruto, 1987) has acquired in the Peninsula idiosyncratic features that cannot be entirely reconciled with models elaborated for other European languages (see Cerruti, Crocco, & Marzo, in press). The reasons for this peculiarity are historical and socio-cultural. In the final discussion (Section 6), we outline the implications of the current analysis for the phonetics/ phonology of rhotics and offer perspectives for further research development
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