Spectral characteristics of voiceless fricative consonants in Florentine Italian

Tuscan Italian is characterized by the spirantization of voiceless stops. This process has been well studied in the past from different points of view. However, instrumental phonetics surveys are, at present, very few. The purpose of the research is to examine the spectro-acoustic properties of Florentine fricative allophones. In particular, the noise of voiceless fricatives is investigated using FFT spectra taken from extensive corpora of quasi-spontaneous dialogues produced by various speakers. The analysis seems to suggest the presence of a continuum of allophonic realizations. The location of energy in the spectrum plays a relevant role in the place of articulation detection of these fricative sounds. The analysis performed has allowed to establish with more precision the phonetic nature of the allophonic variants