A Beats-and-Binding account of Italian phonotactics

In this contribution I make an attempt to account for Italian phonotactics in the framework of Beats-and-Binding phonology (B&B henceforth), a syllable-less theory proposed by Dziubalska-Koɫaczyk (2002) and later developed in Dziubalska-Koɫaczyk 2009, Dziubalska-Koɫaczyk & Zielińska 2010 and Marecka & Dziubalska-Koɫaczyk 2012. The theory itself is part of the more general framework of Naturalness Theory (Dressler et al. 1987) which finds its origins in Natural Phonology (Stampe 1969, Donegan 1978). I show that B&B is better suited than sonority hierarchy-based theories (SH henceforth) to explain some aspects of Italian phonotactics: (1) the special status of /s/C clusters word-initially, (2) the ban on /tl, dl/ clusters and, (3) the distribution of the definite masculine article allomorphs il and lo before /j/ and /w/. Besides the calculation of the Net Auditory Distance (NAD) proposed by Dziubalska-Koɫaczyk, I argue for the importance of the relative salience of a segment within its natural phonological class. As a matter of fact, phenomena that could not be handled by former phonotactic theories are easily explained by B&B.