First Published in 2002. The Italian phenomenon known as raddoppiamento sintattico, or sometimes raddoppiamento fonosintattico, has received a vast amount of attention. Long recognized in Italian grammar books, the process consists of the gemination of a word-initial consonant in certain environments. The word raddoppiamento means “doubling,” and it is deemed “syntactic” or “phonosyntactic” because the process spans word boundaries. This offers a synchronic and diachronic cross-dialectical study of this phenomenon.

Previous analyses of RS tend to focus on either the post-stress environment, positing a synchronic phonological account, or the lexical environment, offering a diachronic explanation related to the lost final consonant. Most accounts address only Standard Italian, or a particular dialect or group of dialects, without considering the whole picture of the entire language system. Using Optimality Theory, the present analysis proposes a single phonological account for both environments of RS, incorporating the differing patterns of the dialects. It also addresses lenition in those dialects in which it interacts with RS. In addition, a historical perspective reveals how the diachronic developments in each dialect group led to current synchronic patterns.