Effects of raddoppiamento sintattico on tonal alignment in Italian

Raddoppiamento (Fono-) Sintattico (RS) is a phenomenon found in Central and Southern varieties of Italian, by which an oxytone word1 lengthens the initial consonant of word2. One possible interpretation is that RS is a resyllabification process, depending on the same constraints on syllable structure as within-word gemination. If this is correct, we also expect both phenomena to be signaled by the same cues. As a consequence of syllable structure and vowel length differences, in Neapolitan Italian the peak of the L*+H nuclear accent is later in words containing a geminate (nonno) than in words containing a singleton consonant (nono). This paper reports a pilot study on effects of RS on tonal alignment in Neapolitan Italian. The results show that, as in the case of items containing geminates, the H target is later when RS is applied. This suggests that RS can be regarded as a process of syllable restructuring.