• The Conference
  • Home
  • Programme
  • Venue & directions
  • Organizing Committee
  • Scientific Committee
  • Exhibitors & sponsors
  • Satellite events
  • Conference Party
• Past & future
  • Previous symposia
  • Finland 2014
  • Spain 2016
• About FU Berlin
  • University homepage
  • Humanities at FU

Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 478

Part of Session 101: Sociophonetic research in emerging varieties (Other abstracts in this session)

Sociophonetic variation and emerging ethnolects in immigrant contexts. The case of the Nigerian Community in Turin (Italy).

Authors: Mazzaferro, Gerardo (1); Romano, Antonio (2)
Submitted by: Mazzaferro, Gerardo (University of Turin, Italy)

This paper represents a contribution to the understanding of what phonetic variation can offer to the comprehension of processes of formation of new varieties within immigrant urban contexts,  namely the Nigerian community in Turin (Italy).

In other words, the main focus is to demonstrate how determined fonetic variables are index of processes of formation of new ethnic varieties (or ethnolects).

By observing homogeneous first generation groups of speakers (belonging to the same age and social group), we use the term ethnolect to indicate a continuum of interlanguages. We can assert that the Italian varieties of this continuum, which we have observed by Nigerian speakers in Turin, share phonetic (also morpho-syntactic, lexical and pragmatic) features representing the core of an emerging immigrant ethnolect.

In order to support our view about the existence of this ethnolect, we collected semi-guided interviews with 18 both male and female speakers aged 22-45 and coming from Benin City. The corresponding recordings allowed us to organise a corpus of spoken Italian as a second language of more than 8 hours. This corpus is part of a larger in progress research project about recently developed multilingual immigrant communities recently settled in Turin, more specifically Anglophone immigrants coming from: Sub-Saharan Africa (Nigeria, Cameroon, Ghana, Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda) and South and South-East Asia (India, Pakistan, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka, Philippines).

In this contribution we have focused on 15 interviews of this corpus and analysed a selection of utterances which were interesting from the phonetic point of view. We observed several phonetic phenomena constituting the main features of this emerging variety; in particular, it is worth noting the syntactic doubling as already investigated in other ethnic speech communities in Turin and the postalveolar realization of /t/ e /d/ (also in complex clusters /nd/, /nt/, as in quando ‘when’), subject to a tendency towards affrication in palatal contexts (as /tj/ and /dj/ as in dialetto ‘dialect’). Other features deal with deaffrication of voiced affricates (/dz/, and to lesser extent, /dʒ/), /u/ fronting and /ɛ/ raising.

However, the marked phonetic feature of this emerging variety is the realization of liquids, especially rhotics.

Italian trills are usually replaced by taps, whereas taps are realized as approximants, except for clusters including post-vocalic /r/. In our data, there is evidence of a systematic /r/ deletion in this contexts with duration effects concerning surronding sounds; in case the following consonant is voiced the preceding vowel is lengthened (e.g. giorno ‘day’ [ˈdʒoːno]); by contrast if the following consonant is voiceless the latter undergoes a similar lengthening process (e.g. sporco ‘dirty’ [sˈpokːo]). We can consider this feature as the most characterizing due to the fact that it has never been attested in other ethnic communities in Turin.

These features contribute to sketch, from the ome hand, the phonetic profile of the restructured linguistic repertoire of this Anglophone multi-lingual community; from the other, they help to describe the structural features of this ethnolect.