Events

Abstract

“Continuum con addensamenti”, ‘continuum with agglomerations’: this is how Berruto once described the Italian linguistic repertoire. Much has been discussed about the extremes of this continuum; however, little do we know about those intermediate “agglomerations”. How many are there? How are they organized? Do they share features? To address these questions, we adopt a phonetic perspective and borrow a technique typically used in commercial profiling. Examining established Neapolitan phonetic features alongside new prosodic parameters, we identify possible speaker profiles and features agglomerations, shedding a new light on the intermediate varieties of the Italian standard-dialect continuum. In this talk, I will discuss preliminary studies and findings, applying this innovative methodology to offer new insights into the nature of the concept of variety.

Last year, several ΔiaLing members published a monograph:

• Jóhanna Barðdal, Oblique subjects in Germanic: their status, history and reconstruction
• Nelson Goering, Prosody in Medieval English and Norse
• Mihaela Ilioaia, The MIHI EST construction: An instance of non-canonical subject marking in Romanian

We would like to give them the opportunity to present their monographs and we will toast with them on this success. This presentation and celebration will take place on the 28^th of February, starting at 4 pm, in room 3.30 (Camelot) of the Blandijn. You are all very welcome to join!