Approximant and lateral palatals in Italian: an acoustic and perceptive study of young speakers in Turin Approssimanti e laterali palatali in Italiano: l’effetto della pronuncia sulla conversione fono-grafemica in un gruppo di giovani parlanti torinesi En It

Résumé En

Due to the articulatory proximity, Italian /ʎ/ and /j/ are confused by some speakers.The neutralization of the /ʎ/-/j/ contrast lets prevail [j]-like sounds. In order toinvestigate these phenomena, two classification tasks were proposed aiming to assessthe incidence of the duration factor in distinguishing intervocalic segments.Furthermore, a reading task and a pseudo-words dictation task were proposed. Itemerged that the duration plays a significant role in the identification of /ʎ/ and /j/.Through the analysis of participants’ oral productions, two groups were identified:those who neutralize/ʎ/ and /j/ in pronunciation (NG: 30%) and those who are ableto distinguish them (DG). It emerged that the NG has greater difficulties in the grapho-phonemic conversion of pseudo-words than the GD. For the NG, it appears thatdifferent parameters (the quality of the sound and its duration) do not conflict in therecognition of [j] with non-prototypical duration, but that the speakers rely only on theduration of the sound.