Vowel duration is not contrastive in standard and regional varieties of
Italian. However, vowels in stressed open syllables are longer than
unstressed vowels or vowels in closed syllables. The increased duration is
not equal in all positions. Most notably, the increased duration of a
stressed open penultimate syllable is much greater than the duration of a
stressed open antepenultimate syllable or a stressed final syllable, which
has no noticeable duration increase. Nonetheless, phonological analyses of
Italian have characterised length by a single rule (see for example Vogel
1986, Nespor & Vogel 1986) that lengthens non-final main stress vowels
regardless of position. Phonetic studies, particularly Farnetani & Kori
(1983, 1990) and Marotta (1985), pay closer attention to the duration of
stressed vowels in different positions. Although their explanations of
stressed vowel duration differ, the common theme is that duration
differences are due to shortening vowels as a consequence of word
compression or position (antepenultimate or penultimate syllable) in the
word.
While the phonetic approaches account for differences in duration due
to shortening, the phonological approaches propose lengthening with no
regard for actual duration differences. The phonetic and phonological
approaches to stressed vowel duration in Italian appear to be diametrically
opposed. This paper proposes that lengthening a stressed vowel is the
correct characterisation of duration differences in Italian, but there is no
single rule that lengthens stressed vowels.