pronounced as /notice/The Tuscan gorgia (Italian: gorgia toscana pronounced as /it/, pronounced as /it-IT-52/; 'Tuscan throat') is a phonetic phenomenon governed by a complex of allophonic rules characteristic of the Tuscan dialects, in Tuscany, Italy, especially the central ones, with Florence traditionally viewed as the center.[1] [2]
The gorgia affects the voiceless stops pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/, which are pronounced as fricative consonants in post-vocalic position (when not blocked by the competing phenomenon of syntactic gemination):
An example: the word Italian: identificare ('to identify') pronounced as //identifiˈkare// is pronounced by a Tuscan speaker as pronounced as /it-IT-52/, not as pronounced as /it/, as standard Italian phonology would require. The rule is sensitive to pause, but not word boundary, so that pronounced as //la ˈkasa// ('the house') is realized as pronounced as /it-IT-52/, while the two phonemes pronounced as //t// of pronounced as //la ˈtuta// 'the overalls' are interdental pronounced as /link/ in pronounced as /it-IT-52/, and pronounced as //p// is pronounced pronounced as /link/ so pronounced as //la ˈpipa// 'the pipe (for smoking)' emerges as pronounced as /it-IT-52/.
(In some areas the voiced counterparts pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ can also appear as fricative approximants pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/ pronounced as /link/, especially in fast or unguarded speech. This, however, appears more widespread elsewhere in the Mediterranean, being standard in Spanish and Greek.)
In a stressed syllable, pronounced as //k t p//, preceded by another stop, can occasionally be realized as true aspirates pronounced as /[kʰ tʰ pʰ]/, especially if the stop is the same, for example pronounced as /it-IT-52/ (Italian: appunto, 'note'), pronounced as /it-IT-52/ (Italian: attingo, 'I draw on'), or pronounced as /it-IT-52/ (Italian: a casa, 'at home', with phonosyntactic strengthening due to the preposition).
Establishing a hierarchy of weakening within the class pronounced as //k t p// is not an easy task. Recent studies have called into question the traditional view that mutation of pronounced as //p// and pronounced as //t// is less widespread geographically than pronounced as //k// → pronounced as /[h]/, and in areas where the rule is not automatic, pronounced as //p// is often more likely to weaken than pronounced as //t// or pronounced as //k//.
On the other hand, deletion in rapid speech always affects pronounced as //k// first and foremost wherever it occurs, but pronounced as //t// reduces less often to pronounced as /[h]/, especially in the most common forms such as participles (pronounced as /it-IT-52/ Italian: andato 'gone'). Fricativisation of pronounced as //k// is by far the most perceptually salient of the three, however, and so it has become a stereotype of Tuscan dialects.
The phenomenon is more evident and finds its irradiation point in the city of Florence. From there, the gorgia spreads its influence along the entire Arno valley, losing strength nearer the coast. On the coast, pronounced as //p// and usually pronounced as //t// are not affected. The weakening of pronounced as //k// is a linguistic continuum in the entire Arno valley, in the cities of Prato, Pistoia, Montecatini Terme, Lucca, Pisa, Livorno.
In the northwest, it is present to some extent in Versilia. In the east, it extends over the Pratomagno to include Bibbiena and its outlying areas, where pronounced as //k t p// are sometimes affected, both fully occlusive pronounced as /[k], [t], [p]/ and lenited (lax, unvoiced) allophones being the major alternates.
The Apennine Mountains are the northern border of the phenomenon, and while a definite southern border has not been established, it is present in Siena and further south to at least San Quirico d'Orcia. In the far south of Tuscany, it gives way to the lenition (laxing) typical of northern and coastal Lazio.
The Tuscan gorgia arose perhaps as late as the Middle Ages as a natural phonetic phenomenon, much like the consonant voicing that affected Northern Italian dialects and the rest of Western Romance (now phonemicised as in pronounced as //aˈmika// 'friend' (f.) > pronounced as //aˈmiɡa//), but it remained allophonic in Tuscany, as laxing or voicing generally does elsewhere in Central Italy and in Corsica.
Although it was once hypothesised that the Italian: gorgia phenomena are the continuation of similar features in the language that predated Romanization of the area, Etruscan, that view is no longer held by most specialists. [3] [4]
Instead, it is increasingly accepted as being a local form of the same consonant weakening that affects other speech in Central Italy, extending far beyond, to Western Romance. Support for that hypothesis can be found in several facts: