Exploring sociolinguistic discontinuity in a minority variety of French

Abstract

Three different speaking styles and fifteen regional varieties of Italian are compared in order to evaluate if, and to what extent, inter-speaker variability and contextual variation can condition the temporal dynamics of speech. The analysis bases on %V, ∆C, ∆V, nPVI and rPVI metrics: as the samples of speech tested do not present internal variation in segmental phonology and in phonotactics, very similar values are expected for the three subsets. Interestingly, results show a certain range of variability across the three groups. The phenomenon is due, in our opinion, to factors external to rhythmic structure and related to high-level prosodic domains, which can also influence segmental duration patterns.