FW: Capocollo (1953)

[Laurence Horn]

At 5:50 AM -0500 2/4/03, Frank Abate wrote:
>Just to add to what Larry H says below and what Steve Boatti observed, the
>New Haven area Italian-American community (of apizza fame), most of whose
>ancestors hale from Southern Italy or Sicily (it is said), say this
>something like "COP- at -COAL", with primary stress on the last, and secondary
>on the first.  At least, that's how it sounds to me.  The sounds represented
>by "C" are quite guttural, and the second one may be slightly voiced, though
>not quite all the way to "G", to my ear.
>
>So this is the last-syllable-of-standard-Italian-being-dropped syndrome, as
>has been observed on ADS-L with several other Italianisms used in the New
>Haven area.
>
Right.  As for the consonants, I wonder if they aren't basically
voiceless but unaspirated /k/ rather than voiced /g/; that would
explain why they seem more g-like the more stressed they are.  As
Frank says, the third syllable in "capicola" gets the main stress and
the first one can get secondary stress, which would predict that an
unaspirated voiceless /k/ they would be heard as /g/ to some extent
in both, but more so in the last syllable, where aspiration would be
strongest in English.

Larry