The prosodic domain of Italian troncamento is not the clitic group

Abstract

Final vowel deletion, or troncamento , a phonological phenomenon of standard Italian, consists in the deletion of a word-final mid-vowel after a sonorant consonant. Troncamento often is assumed to be an optional phonological process, depending on rate of speech and regis-ter. In previous research, it has been claimed that troncamento is a prosodic rule that applies obligatorily within the clitic group, and optionally in the intonational phrase. It has also been stressed that troncamento, however, is not a canonic prosodic rule like raddoppiamento sintat-tico (consonant gemination), because it does not treat words of different lexical categories in the same way, in that it applies productively only to verbs. In this paper it will be shown that the prosodic domain within which troncamento applies is the phonological phrase, where effects of optionality arise from optionality of prosodic restructuring. In contrast to previous assump-tions, the claim that troncamento applies optionally in the intonational phrase is not supported by the data. Furthermore, it will become clear that troncamento applies productively and in a rule-governed fashion not only to verbs, but to nouns and adjectives, as well. Thus, the analysis of troncamento provides further evidence for the phonological phrase as a domain in the pho-nology of Italian, thereby supporting the assumption of domain convergence, and it contributes additional evidence obviating the need for the clitic group.