Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Notation Conventions -- The International Phonetic Alphabet -- Abbreviations -- 1 INTRODUCTION -- 1.1 Approaching Italian -- 1.2 A rationale -- 1.3 An overview of this book -- 1.4 Orthography -- 2 THEORETICAL BACKGROUND -- 2.1 Optimality Theory -- 2.2 The parallel structures model of segmental representations -- 3 AVERY BRIEF HISTORY OF ITALIAN PHONOLOGY -- 3.1 Latin as a starting point -- 3.2 Major developments on the way from Latin to Italian -- 3.2.1 Changes in the consonantal system -- 3.2.2 Changes in the vowel system -- 3.2.3 Changes in prosodic organization -- 3.3 Explaining historical change -- 3.3.1 Neogrammarian sound change -- 3.3.2 Contrast innovation and fading-out of phonological processes -- 3.3.3 Classical lexical diffusion -- 3.3.4 Rule inversion -- 3.3.5 Summary -- 4 SEGMENTAL PHONOLOGY -- 4.1 The sound inventory -- 4.1.1 Consonants -- 4.1.2 Vowels -- 4.2 Segmental alternations -- 4.2.1 Palatalization -- 4.2.2 The status of glides: vowel-glide alternations -- 4.2.3 Vowel neutralization -- 4.3 A feature set for the Italian segment inventory -- 5 SYLLABLE STRUCTURE -- 5.1 Italian onset phonotactics -- 5.2 The rhyme -- 5.2.1 The size of the rhyme -- 5.2.2 The coda condition -- 5.3 Across syllable boundaries -- 5.4 An OT analysis -- 6 WORD STRESS -- 6.1 Overview -- 6.2 Default stress -- 6.2.1 Identifying the problem -- 6.2.2 Nonce-word test method -- 6.2.3 Results -- 6.2.4 Analysis of nonce-word stress patterns -- 6.2.5 Comments and further refinement -- 6.3 Lexical stress -- 6.3.1 Conflicting stress marks -- 6.3.2 OT analysis of lexical stress -- 6.4 Secondary stress -- 6.5 The domain of stress -- 7 PROSODIC PHONOLOGY -- 7.1 The prosodic hierarchy -- 7.2 Intervocalic s-voicing -- 7.2.1 Overview -- 7.2.2 Formal analyses -- 7.3 Raddoppiamento sintattico.

7.3.1 The different types of consonant doubling and their previous analyses -- 7.3.2 An OT analysis of phonological consonant doubling -- 7.3.3 Summary -- 7.4 Vowel deletion -- 7.4.1 Deletion, syntactic structure, and speech rate -- 7.4.2 A unified analysis of deletion -- 7.5 Phrasal stress and focus: phonology and syntax in interaction -- 7.5.1 Overview -- 7.5.2 Phonological and syntactic phrasing -- 7.5.3 Phrasal stress -- 7.5.4 Phrasal stress, focus, and syntactic movement -- 7.6 Conclusions on prosodic phonology -- References -- Subject Index -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- Q -- R -- S -- T -- U -- V -- W -- Index of Names -- A -- B -- C -- D -- E -- F -- G -- H -- I -- J -- K -- L -- M -- N -- O -- P -- R -- S -- T -- V -- W -- Z.