Spie sociolinguistiche e percezione della provenienza geografica nell’italiano di Roma

Whereas sociophonetic of production has received great attention, less is known on how variation in speech is processed and, if and how, this variation carries social meaning. For example, it is not obvious that variation, that we observe in production, is significant to the hearers, and, moreover, little is known on the quantity of variation that we need to construct a social image of the speaker. In this paper we investigate social salience of rhotic degemination in Rome Italian. In particular, the aim is to verify which phonetic cues convey the perception of degemination, and whether this variable is associated with prototypical RI speakers. A perceptive test was spread online, in order to verify if tokens perceived with the singleton rhotic are commonly associated with a particular geographic background. The perceptive test shows that rhotic type plays a major role in conveying the perception of degemination, whereas quantitative phonetic cues are not sufficient per se. Moreover, tokens clearly perceived as degeminated are significantly associated with Rome Italian.