LINGUIST List 2.213

Saturday, 11 May 1991

Misc: Dialects of Italy, Phonology, Bibliographer for Rumanian lx

Editor for this issue: <>

Directory

1. Hurch, Gallo-Romance Dialects of Italy
2. Robert D Hoberman, Phonology of letter-names
3. , Help wanted: Bibliographer for Rumanian linguistics

In the gallo-romance dialects of northern Italy the subject pronoun is
obligatorily "doubled", i.e., expressed by an accented and an unaccented
(proclitic?) pronoun. These two pronouns are different from each other
(not in all persons, and this differs somewhat from dialect to dialect).
We thus have constructions like:
piedmontese: mi a gh'o rasun,
which would be in French: j'ai raison "I am right". But whereas a 
French construction like moi j'ai raison would express a focus, the 
analogous galloitalian construction is obligatory.
Does anyone know of parallel examples to the obligatory "double"
construction from other languages or of proposals for their description
and/or explanation?
Bernhard Hurch
Bergische Universitaet
D-56 Wuppertal, FRG
Fax: 0202.439.2901
e-mail: hurchmvax2.urz.uni-wuppertal.dbp.de
(or under "queries")
Thank you!

In the discussion of whether Russian [y] is a phoneme distinct from /i/ several 
writers have adduced the name of the letter "y", pronounced by some as [y]. 
Names of alphabet letters can sometimes have phonological properties outside of 
the general system of a language. The Turkish letter that looks like a "g" 
with a breve on top is normally called /yumushak ge/ 'soft g'. However, some 
Turkish speakers (my informant is a Turkish Cypriot), in reciting the alphabet, 
call this letter /Ge/, where G stands for a voiced velar fricative, although 
the sound [G] otherwise does not occur in their speech! (It does in some other 
dialects of Turkish, low-prestige dialects, but that's another matter.) Does 
anyone know of other such instances?
Bob Hoberman

 The Comparative Romance Linguistics Newsletter is expecting to need
the services of a bibliographer for the Rumanian (Romanian?) section
of its annual bibliography. Should know Rumanian of course,
and have access to a good library and/or other sources of information
about recent linguistic publications on Rumanian.
 Contact me for details...
-----------------------------------
Lee Hartman, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, ga5123siucvmb.bitnet

[End Linguist List, Vol. 2, No. 213]