COMPORTAMENTO ASIMMETRICO DELLE VOCALI MEDIE TONICHE IN VARIETÀ SICILIANE OCCIDENTALI

It is well known that the tonic vocalism of the varieties spoken in Sicily – both dialectal and Italian – has five phonemes distributed across three degrees of open ness. The mid vowels in this system – front and back – have generally been defined as open or mid in timbre. However, Matranga (2013) demonstrates – through acoustic analysis – that in non-diphthongal varieties of western Sicily, the timbre of the mid vowel phonemes is actually rather closed (mid-high) and that, further more, in some varieties of this area of Sicily, the same vowels undergo a consider able lowering when they occur in particular phonetic contexts. On this occasion, we examine the vocalism – dialectal and Italian – of a locali ty in western Sicily as an example of the asymmetrical behavior of stressed mid vowels, showing how, being realized in the mid-high area, the back vowels are not subject to the phonological rule of lowering that instead affects the front vowels