Considering Neapolitan/Central and Southern Italian dialects from a typological and theoretical perspective, the pattern of strength and weakness seems to fall across an unexpected boundary.

The root-initial position appears to be weak, patterning with intervocalic singleton consonants and some post-coda positions. However, there is a typological tendency for a consonant in Initial and post-coda position to be strong relative to the intervocalic singleton position. However, there are various sources of phonological strength. In representationally-minded models of phonology there are in fact three different kinds of ‘strength’.

Theoretical models of positional strength and weakness have long taken the initial position to be inherently strong. This finding has been confirmed experimentally (Becker et al. 2012). Also, there are many phenomena that speak to this conclusion. In English for instance, even though aspiration looks like it ought to be foot-initial (cf. Anderson & Ewen 1987), non-pretonic initial consonants are also aspirated: [k^h]oréa ‘Korea’ cf. [k^h]at ‘cat’ (cf. Harris 1994).

Prima facie, Neapolitan voiced-stop lenition of /b/ looks like it hinges on positional factors. This, however, will be shown to be false, even though positional terms have so far been crucial to describing the pattern (absolute initial position, intervocalic etc…). Moreover, the pattern of lenition is completely at odds with prosodically-driven lenition.

Licensing Inheritance (Harris 1997) is a framework of strength and weakness that focuses on prosodic factors. In this model, initial positions are not inherently strong, but foot-initial positions certainly should be. The diagram in (11) shows how phonological strength, the ability to license features is proportional to the proximity to the head of the domain (the stressed nucleus).

However, this model cannot account for this pattern of weakening in Neapolitan because the weak alternant is found in foot-initial position.

Taking pure positional factors into account, typically strength and weakness are distributed as shown in (13). Initiality, either of the word or syllable, is taken as being inherently strong. Word-initial onsets, particularly those in absolute-initial position, will be taken to be strong. Meanwhile, the intervocalic onset context is assumed to be weaker, and the disjunctive context of being pre-consonantal and word-final {–.C, –#} is taken to be weakest of all.25

Despite what appears to be a general ban on initial voiced stops, these sounds are, in a sense, still allowed in initial position (in the first phonological onset of the word), but only under certain morphological contexts. Consider this from the perspective of contrast. Once the full set of morpho-syntactic contexts has been listed, the first onset of roots can hold any consonant phoneme of the language, including voiced stops. Therefore, all consonant contrasts are permitted in the initial onset position once the full set of word-initial environments have been considered. This is sharply different from an actually positionally weak syllabic position, such as the word-internal coda. Typically, an internal coda hosts a dramatically reduced set of consonant contrasts, and this remains true when all the morphological contexts are considered. That is because this is a truly positionally weak position and it leads to extensive neutralisation (via devoicing, sonorisation, debuccalisation, limit to coronality etc…).

In Neapolitan, the conditions by which voiced stops are allowed in the first onset of a root are as follows: (a) they form a complex with a voiced fricative or a nasal consonant, (b) they form a geminate. These conditions are invariably created by preceding morphemes. Therefore, the strong variant of a voiced stop in root-initial position reinforces the presence of a morpheme boundary to its left. This creates alternations where a morpheme in isolation surfaces with the weak form of a voiced stop and the multi-morphemic form shows up with the strong form. The fact that C₁ is a strong position allows it to be a good position for expressing patterns of morphology that are signalled exclusively by the amount of phonological material in C₁. The argument is as follows: if a morphological paradigm is defined by melodic complexity in the form of a large amount of phonological material, this necessarily requires that elsewhere, related stems do not contain those same feature combinations. Therefore, in such systems, C₁ will be simple in paradigm alpha (i.e. basic, unsuffixed word-initial) and complex in beta (i.e negation). Importantly then, even a simplex alternanting root such as [r]ito ‘finger’ (weak), systemically the C₁ position is exercising its positional strength in that: C₁ is simplex in a quasi-paradigm that helps signal the morpheme boundary by C₂.

The contrast between Count and non-feminine Mass nouns (21h) shows some of the strongest evidence for root-initial consonants alternating according to a strong and weak paradigm.

These Count vs. non-feminine Mass nouns (and certain clitics and determiners) are only distinguished by the root-initial consonant (C₁). C₁ must be geminated, leading to a contrast for the v/b alternating pairs based on the weak (v) and the strong (bː).

The details of the syntactic structure are not crucial for the paper, we suppose the number and gender features are introduced by the appropriate syntactic heads, however these are not represented in (22). What is crucial is that when Det is valued for Count the exponent is /o-/ which does not trigger RS, while if it is valued for Mass [-fem] then it will be exponed by /oCV-/.

The Locative is another domain where the phonology appears to contain a nearly fully morphologised weak/strong alternation. The exponent of the Locative is presumably just a piece of syllable structure linked to a nasal feature. This allows the root-initial consonant to surface in its strong form.

To a lesser degree, this is also the case with the (quasi)prefix S-: [z-ˈbiɲːə] ‘escape’. The S- forms a semi-productive quasi-paradigm, the semi-fossilised inheritance from Latin EX- ‘out of’. This alternation can only be maintained because C₁ is a phonologically strong position and it is able to license the contrast and its strength reinforces the parsing of a morpheme boundary to its left.

Although, Neapolitan has not made the final step toward a true morphological pattern based on the strength of C₁, and maybe never will be given the influence from Italian (Andalò & Bafile 1991), there are some striking parallels here with languages that did.

Typologically, this initial strength-based alternation is strikingly similar to a family of fully morphologised initial-strength alternations called consonant mutations.

These are found in many unrelated language families and are not instances of positional lenition. Instead, they constitute a paradigmatic effect based on whether C₁ is simple or complex (for a certain feature): Bantu (Kula 2002), Nivkh (Shiraishi 2006), West Atlantic (McLaughlin 2000) and Celtic (Breit 2015).

The following data show how paradigms can be defined in this way. Roots undergo weak-initial vs. strong-initial alternations depending on their morphemic context. These patterns occur in a wide range of language families from all over the globe, including isolates such as Nivkh spoken in North-Eastern Asia, or Niger-Congo languages from Africa, especially West-Atlantic such as Seereer-Siin, and Celtic languages such as Manx from North-Western Europe.

Clearly this type of morphology recurs in human languages (it is not a product only of relatedness or areal effects) and our discussion of the Neapolitan data shows a case where historical and phonological processes could have led (or perhaps are still leading) to this pattern. We hope this could trigger interest in the formal diachronic stages of consonant mutation in language families where it is less well understood.

In all these cases, we see that the inherent strength of the initial position is recruited as the property that expones or reinforces a certain morphological pattern. The fact that C₁ is recruited for this purpose is probably not coincidental, as only (a) a positionally strong position or (b) a position that is optionally/parametrically strong ~ weak could bear this alternation.

The difference between Neapolitan and the consonant mutation systems listed above is that the consonant mutation patterns are always phonologically irregular. In Neapolitan that is not the case. The alternations we see word-initially are basically the same phonological conditions that hold word-medially. However, this does not change the fact that the phonological system helps identify morpheme boundaries (on the left edge – and only the left edge, because it is a strong position). The less regular the Neapolitan phonological pattern becomes, the more likely it is that the morphology will exploit the huge set of existing root-initial alternations.

Returning to the phonology of Neapolitan and Central/Southern Italian, we will now show what kind of specific phonological process is responsible for the pattern.

As we concluded in section (3), the clue to understanding the phonological cause of the pattern is the post-rhotic coda context: Tusc. barba vs. Neap. varva ‘beard’. This datum is not caused by positional nor prosodic factors, it is caused by the third type of phonological strength and weakness: feature sharing.

Feature sharing, or branchingness/bipositionality, is an effect whereby the features/segments that are bipositional (shared across syllable structure) have a far greater chance of remaining in the phonological forms over time and being phonologically ‘strong’ (Scheer 2000, 2004; Honeybone 2001; 2002; 2005; Bucci 2013; Ulfsbjorninn & Lahrouchi 2016). Synchronically, these bipositional features/segments are also more resistant to phonological tampering/manipulation.

There is both a substantive and formal component to the Honeybonian principle: sharing makes us stronger. Substantively, features in multiple positions are more likely to receive strong cues in the phonetic form. As such, they are more likely to be perceived by listeners, therefore lexicalised and preserved over time. Formally, interrupting segmental material that is shared across two positions requires intervening between association lines. Disrupting association lines brings its own formal difficulties and so it is also avoided (the no crossing condition/geminate inalterability (Goldsmith 1976; Hayes 1986; Hammond 1988; Blevins 2004; Russo & Ulfsbjorninn 2017).

The strong/weak alternations in the Neapolitan data can be understood to be caused by a specific phonotactic on voiced stops.

These sounds are subject to a phonotactic called a Melody-to-Structure Licensing Constraint (MSLC). These are a family of licensing constraints (cf. Charette & Göksel 1998) that specifically regulate the associations between melodic features and certain types of syllable structure (Ulfsbjorninn & Lahrouchi 2016; Lahrouchi in prep.).

According to the relevant MSLC of Neapolitan, in order to be phonetically interpreted, voiced stops (or at least /b/) must be bipositional. This means that the features of a voiced stop are obliged to attach to two pieces of skeletal structure.

The Branchingness condition in (28) means that, with the exception of some recent loans, underlying singleton voiced stops cannot be phonetically interpreted. Geminate voiced stops on the other hand are permitted because they are bipositional (connected to two pieces of syllable structure) (cf. stop lenition in Ulfsbjorninn & Lahrouchi (2016)).

However, interestingly, it is not necessary for the all of the features of the voiced stop to branch in order to satisfy the MSLC. The pattern of post-consonantal voiced stops is shown in (29).

The data in (29) shows that full gemination is not necessary to license the voiced stop. Instead, even some kinds of partial gemination are sufficient. The features that are required for this partial geminate hypothesis are surprisingly simply to state in Element Theory.

Element Theory (ET) (Kaye et al. 1985; Harris & Lindsey 1995; Backley 2011) is a model of featural representation based on monovalent primes, unlike the articulatory grounded binary features inherited from SPE (Chomsky & Halle 1968).

As shown in the table in (30), nasality and voicing are often exponed by the same Element (Kula 1998; Ploch 1999; Nasukawa 2005; Breit 2017): |L| or |N| (frequently labelled with the acoustic signature: murmur (Harris & Lindsey 1995; Backley & Nasukawa 2010).

Voiced obstruents carry this feature, as do nasals, however, other sonorants do not. In ET, non-nasal sonorants are taken to be passively voiced (cf. the distinction in Halle & Stevens 1971). Therefore, a rhotic such /r/ does not share a phonological voicing feature with voiced stops.35

The implication of this for Neapolitan is that nasals and voiced fricatives will be able to share a phonological feature with voiced stops (|L|), and as such they can come together to form a partial geminate. The rhotic, however, does not share a voicing feature with voiced stops and, therefore, it cannot form a partial geminate with this class of sounds. This leaves voiced stops completely monopositional after rhotic-codas (just as they are as singletons in an intervocalic context).

It seems, therefore, that the Branchingness condition in Neapolitan is specified for the branching of a specific feature: |L| (voicing in obstruents, nasality in sonorants).

In the absolute-initial position (##_) of a monomorphemic form, a Neapolitan voiced stop-onset has no choice but to be monopositional. Therefore, utterance-initial voiced stops will always surface in their weak version (32b). Conversely, the condition in (31) is straightforwardly satisfied by the structure in (32a) where the whole segment branches and forms a voiced-stop geminate. This is why any RS trigger that induces gemination will allow the strong from of the root-initial consonant to surface.

Many morpheme types cliticise onto the domain with the root-initial consonant (C₁), this allows the Branchingness condition to be satisfied. Under these conditions, the licensing of the voiced onset’s whole Element set (|ʔ| |H| |L|) is guaranteed. C₁ surfaces in its strong form.

However, Branchingness does not require full gemination to interpret the voiced stop. A nasal or voiced fricative occurring to the left of a voiced stop will allow the branching of the feature |L|, thereby the whole structure will be licensed. These will be supplied by various morphemes.

As also stated in the table (30), in ET sonorants are taken to be devoid of laryngeal features. Their voicing is automatic, non-contrastive and therefore not featurally represented (cf. passive voicing Halle & Stevens 1971; Dresher 2009). Therefore, even word-internally, Neapolitan /r/ will have no |L| to share with a voiced stop that follows it. So items like /barba/ ‘beard’, shown in (36) result in an ill-formed sequence from the perspective of the Branchingness condition. Because the complex (ʔ, H, L) does not share its |L| feature. Consequently, the /b/ is doomed to be monopositional and therefore surfaces as its weak equivalent.