Doctoral Dissertation Research: Consonant Weakening in Florentine Italian

为什么有些辅音的发音与我们在不同语境中期望的发音非常不同？什么因素会影响一个辅音在流利的言语中如何出现？某些声音是否比其他声音更容易发生变化？在Elizabeth Zsiga博士的指导下，Christina Villafana小姐的博士论文将讨论这些与佛罗伦萨意大利语有关的问题，佛罗伦萨意大利语是一种方言，具有丰富的弱辅音。维拉法纳小姐和其他人之前的研究表明，这种过程需要详细的声学分析和理论解释。使用的研究方法将是：(1)开发一个实验设计，控制与弱化有关的语音、语音和社会因素；(2)收集、数字化和定量分析该方言中弱化的声音。在本论文的核心将是一个实验分析在佛罗伦萨，超越目前存在的文献。它的第二个重点将是整合与声音变化有关的既定理论，并分析导致这种方言减弱的因素。对《托斯卡纳》的分析是评估音系理论实力的起点，也是阐明我们对涉及语言处理的生理和认知因素的一般理解的起点。这样的评估有助于理论音韵学领域之外的至少四个广泛的研究领域。首先，这项研究的结果，特别是它试图调和语音变化中涉及的语音（抽象）和语音（物理）因素，将为理论和应用语言学家更好地理解从第一语言到第二语言的共同过程提供帮助。深入了解这些会导致第二语言习得问题的过程，为第二语言教师（也可能是言语/语言病理学家）提供了诊断和治疗与声音相关的语言问题和障碍的工具。其次，对这种方言的声音模式进行详细的声学分析可能对语音识别工程师有用，因为他们经常与不标准和有口音的语音作斗争。第三，该项目将提高语言学家对一种语言及其非标准变体之间关系的认识和理解，特别是关于它们的音素清单和与声音相关的过程。最后，广泛的数据收集和分析将有助于佛罗伦萨语言的保存——由于方言的转移和吸收，全球语言的库存越来越少，少数民族语言现象的存档记录将对历史学家、人类学家、社会学家和语言学家有用。

Why are some consonants pronounced very differently from the way we expect them to be in different contexts? What factors affect how a consonant surfaces in fluent speech? Are certain sounds more likely to undergo changes than others? Under the supervision of Dr. Elizabeth Zsiga, Miss Christina Villafana's doctoral dissertation will address these questions as they relate to Florentine Italian, a dialect exhibiting a rich array of weakened consonants. Previous studies by Miss Villafana and others indicate that this type of process warrants detailed acoustic analysis and theoretical explanation. The research methodologies used will be (1) the development of an experimental design that controls for the phonological, phonetic, and social factors involved in weakening and (2) the collection, digitization, and quantitative analysis of sounds that weaken in this dialect. At this dissertation's core will be an experimental analysis of lenition in Florentine that surpasses what presently exists in the literature. Its secondary focus will be an integration of established theories relating to sound change and an analysis of the factors contributing to lenition in this dialect.Analysis of Gorgia Toscana is a starting point for assessing the strength of phonological theories and for illuminating our general understanding of the physiological and cognitive factors involved in language processing. Such assessment contributes to at least four broad areas of study outside the domain of theoretical phonology. First, the results of this study, particularly in its attempt to reconcile the phonological (abstract) and phonetic (physical) factors involved in sound changes, will offer both the theoretical and applied linguist a better understanding of common processes that transfer from first to second language. Thorough understanding of such processes, known to cause problems in second language acquisition, furnishes the second language teacher (and possibly the speech/language pathologist) with tools for diagnosing and treating sound-related linguistic problems and disorders. Second, detailed acoustic analysis of the sound patterns of this dialect may be of use to speech recognition engineers who regularly struggle with nonstandard and accented speech. Third, the project will enhance the linguist's knowledge and understanding of the relationship between a language and its non-standard varieties, particularly with respect to their phoneme inventories and sound-related processes. Finally, the broad range of data collected and analyzed will contribute to the preservation of Florentine speech - as the global inventory of languages grows ever smaller through dialect shift and absorption, archived records of minority language phenomena will be useful to the historian, anthropologist, sociologist, and linguist.