Abstract

This book provides a phonetic and phonological analysis of the varieties spoken in the Reno basin between the Apennines and the city of Bologna. Besides the diachronic reconstruction, which is carried out in a comparative frame together with other Gallo-italic dialects (and also with Gallo-romance), new fieldwork data have been submitted to experimental analysis. These data show that the path from the mountains to the city corresponds to a linguistic history of Bolognese. Such path is analysed not only by observing the phonetic evolution of single vowel and consonant segments, but also especially by considering the whole word structure, through a framework which postulates that rhythmical patterns should be considered as crucial. A book, then, that could be addressed to researchers in Romance philology as much as to local culture enthusiasts.