Alternations in Third Person Accusative Proclitics and Definite Articles in Some Southern Italian Dialects

Several southern Italian dialects show a systematic alternation in the forms of the third person object clitic between proclisis and enclisis; moreover, in proclisis, the object clitic and the definite article have different forms that alternate between prevocalic and preconsonantal contexts. On the whole, the distribution of forms constitutes a varied and complex picture, which has often been treated in terms of allomorphy. In particular, this article examines the arrangement of proclitic forms in the Neapolitan variety in which the forms are distributed according to three different patterns. The article explores the possibility of analysing the alternations in purely phonological terms, using the representational tools of “floating melody”, “stress space” and “virtual geminate”. The results obtained are encouraging: while some alternations have proven to be allomorphic in nature, a unified phonological explanation has been developed for challenging issues, including the so-called “l-deletion” and the corresponding vowel lengthening.