Short vs. long and/or abruptly cut vowels. New perspectives on a debated question

Abstract

This contribution reviews current issues related to the distinction between quantity and syllable-cut languages. The dichotomy is first illustrated by means of some major European languages, mainly Standard German, and then applied to some data from Frignanese, an Italo-Romance variety spoken in Northern Italy. In this dialect vowel duration contrasts are accompanied by some minor quality differences. We argue that Frignanese shares some of the typical properties of a syllable-cut language, for example the fact that vowel duration contrasts crucially depend on word stress. Finally, some new experimental approaches to the close/loose contact dichotomy are briefly presented, which serve the search for physical and physiological correlates on both the acoustic and the articulatory side.