Status Quaestionis

Galaxies sonores: études phonético-phonologiques en hommage à Enrica Galazzi

Oreste Floquet — 2025-12-19

Il n’est pas du tout excessif d’affirmer que les études italiennes concernant la phonétique et la phonologie du français contemporain doivent tout (ou presque) à l’infatigable travail de recherche d’Enrica Galazzi, qui a été professeure de Linguistique française d’abord en Calabre puis à l’Ecole Supérieure pour traducteurs et interprètes de l’Université de Bologne et enfin, pendant la plus grande partie de sa longue vie professionnelle, à l’Université Catholique du Sacré Coeur de Milan. C’est pourquoi, s’ajoute à la publication d’un choix de ses articles en 2023 (Molinari, Rossi et Zanola éds) puis au mélange d’études grammaticales et sociolinguistiques de la même année (Molinari et Paternostro éds), ce numéro de Status Quaestions consacré entièrement à la face signifiante du français, auquel ont participé ses élèves, ses collaborateurs ainsi que d’autres collègues, italiens et français, du groupe (I)PFC (https://www.projet-pfc.net/ et https://cblle.tufs.ac.jp/ipfc/).

Sur le parcours sinueux de l’alphabet phonétique international aux États-Unis

Jacques Durand — 2025-12-19

We will try to understand why the IPA had such difficulty establishing itself in the United States. Starting with a brief analysis by Abercrombie (1982), we compared the practices of Americanists at the turn of the 20th century with the approach of the International Phonetic Association at the same time. We found that their methods and objectives did not match. The IPA has always aimed for a truly international alphabet, i.e., one that is completely standardised, while Americanists sought better notation for the native languages of America.

L’“ortograf fonétik” de Raymond Queneau dans Zazie dans le métro (1959)

Elissa Pustka — 2025-12-19

Based on a digitised version of the novel Zazie dans le metro (1959), this paper presents the first quantitative study of “phonetic orthography’ (eye dialect) in the work of Raymond Queneau. Although non-standard graphic forms in the novel are rarer by far than standard spelling forms, they sometimes appear in accumulations, which explains the often-described shock effect. The features analysed in detail in this paper are schwa (<e>), liquids and liaison. The absences of <e> (86 occ.) and liquids (15 occ.) mainly appear in phonotactic contexts where the corresponding phonemes are variable, especially in frequent grammatical words or constructions where deletion is most common. In the case of liaison (36 occ.), we observe the opposite phenomenon: liaison consonants are mostly represented orthographically in categorical contexts. All three cases share a common trend: ‘phonetic orthography’ appears – as usual – mainly in direct discourse and quite scarcely in the narrative parts of the text.

La prononciation du locuteur natif au prisme du plurilinguisme: poncif sur la production versus enthymème sur la perception

Sylvain Detey — 2025-12-19

In this article, we critically examine some ongoing debates around the concept of “native speaker” in applied linguistics, through the lenses of plurilingual pronunciation education, with a special focus on French. We argue that some of the recent attempts to discredit the functional value of the concept are misled and misleading. We contend that corpus-based variationist linguistics can help us to reconcile research and teaching standards with linguistic realities without mixing up socio-ideological issues and pedagogical or linguistic necessities. We explain why the confusion between “native”, “standard” and “normative” speakers makes little sense, neither from a linguistic viewpoint, nor from a classic anthropological perspective, and why ideological stances may prove hazardous in the field of language education. At a time when AI-based “artificial” speech is about to flow into our pedagogical material and overfill our audiovisual channels, the “native speaker” might turn out to be the last hope for those who cherish “authenticity”.

Liaisons en [n], hiatus et perception de la marque. Le cas de le mien, le tien et le sien

Véronic Algeri — 2025-12-19

Based on the concept of markedness, which we will use from a semantic-pragmatic perspective, we will focus on analysing the currently impossible liaison of singular possessive pronouns, both synchronically and diachronically. This will lead us to rethink the status of hiatus in its relationship with liaison in [n]. After reviewing some historical elements concerning the perception of the values attributable to the linking context of mine, yours, and his, we will analyse the experimental results of recent research on the perception of these phenomena.

Les futures interprètes italophones à l’épreuve des voyelles nasales du français: prononciation et enjeux professionnels

Caterina Falbo — 2025-12-19

The article proposes an analysis of the production of French nasal vowels by MA students of interpretation. The corpus analysed consists of six participants tested in two tasks provided by the IPFC (InterPhonologie du Français Contemporain) protocol, namely reading and free conversation between two learners, and in an additional task of consecutive interpretation. This study aims at investigating whether pronunciation of nasal vowels varies in the different tasks and participants, whether the written text has an impact on the production of nasal sounds and, finally, whether the consecutive interpretation task entails the production of a higher amount of non-standard nasal vowels due to the high cognitive load.

“[soupir] Ah, la prononce de les des nasales [rire]”: une étude IPFC sur les voyelles nasales auprès d’étudiants italophones

Marie-Christine Jamet — 2025-12-19

In this article, we analyse the production of French nasal vowels by Italian learners. Eight participants were asked to complete five tasks (reading a list of words; repeating a list of words; reading the PFC text; free conversation between two learners; guided conversation between a learner and an investigator) following the IPFC (InterPhonologie du Français Contemporain) protocol. This study follows on from a previous study on liaison production in the free conversation task, in which we identified a large number of errors in n-liaisons. In the present article, we examine the production of a nasal postvocalic consonant in all word contexts and in all tasks: we evaluate the occurrence of the nasal postvocalic consonant in relation to other types of errors and we analyse the influence of the task, particularly the effect of written input in reading tasks.

Silvia Baroni, Leggere la letteratura illustrata. Pratiche e voci (1830-1890), Milano, edizioni del verri, 2024, 174 pp., € 18,00

Giorgio Busi Rizzi — 2025-12-19

Nel fiorire di proposte di indagine contemporanee sul rapporto tra testo e immagine, e in una ricezione ormai piena, da parte dell’accademia italiana, del pictorial turn, il libro di Silvia Baroni presenta, fin dal suo sottotitolo – “Pratiche e voci (1830-1890)” –, una prospettiva importante e complementare a molti studi recenti e precedenti.

Antonio Ghislanzoni, Le memorie di un gatto. Romanzo sociale, a cura di R. Colombi, Roma, Officina Libraria, 2024, 152 pp., € 15,00

Gianluca Della Corte — 2025-12-19

Nel 2021 la casa editrice Officina Libraria ha inaugurato una collana, Officina d’Autore, diretta da Claudia Bonsi, Paola Italia e Maria Villano, che si propone di pubblicare opere del secondo Ottocento e del Novecento cadute nell’oblio o addirittura inedite.

Rossana Chianura, Il romanzo genealogico, con una Prefazione di Emanuele Zinato, Milano/Udine, Mimesis Edizioni, 2024, 336 pp., € 32,00

Sara Gambella — 2025-12-19

All’incrocio tra riflessione teorica, storia delle forme e analisi tematica, il volume di Rossana Chianura, uscito nel 2024 per Mimesis Edizioni, è un’indagine sul romanzo genealogico e sulle sue specifiche costanti come sottogenere della forma romanzo, in un arco temporale che va dall’inizio dell’Ottocento alla fine del Novecento, con particolare attenzione alla letteratura italiana.

Guido Scaravilli, Soggettività e Quarto Stato. Modalità della rappresentazione interiore nella narrativa realista e naturalista, Lausanne, Peter Lang, 2024, 442 pp., € 59,95

Nicole Valeri — 2025-12-19

Il saggio di Guido Scaravilli si pone l’obiettivo di studiare l’insorgere della rappresentazione del Quarto Stato nella narrativa dell’Ottocento italiano e francese, in un corpus che da I promessi sposi di Manzoni giunge ai capolavori della stagione verista. Una particolare attenzione è riservata alle modalità con cui la scrittura favorisce l’emergere dell’interiorità dei personaggi del mondo popolare.

Galaxies sonores: études phonético-phonologiques en hommage à Enrica Galazzi

Oreste Floquet — 2025-12-19

Il tema della conversione in Ivanhoe di Walter Scott e nel Rabbi di Bacherach di Heinrich Heine

Silvana Ameruoso — 2025-12-19

The present paper examines the relationship between Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and Heinrich Heine’s The Rabbi of Bacharach with regard to the theme of conversion to Christianity. Both historical novels are based on the stories of Jewish people whom Christians try to convert to their faith. I start with the reception of Scott in Restoration Germany. The Scottish author is chosen by Heine as model for his Rabbi and at the same time surpassed. Compared with the model, the attempts of conversion are developed in a very different way in Heine’s Rabbi, although, in both works, such attempts concern the female protagonists, Rebecca of York for Ivanhoe and Sara for The Rabbi. After comparing the two characters, I will try to explain the different conclusions that Scott and Heine reach: if the former considers emigration as the only possible solution to Christian oppression, the latter offers several possibilities of survival, though none of them proves truly satisfying.

AI-CLIL: Artificial Intelligence for CLIL methodology

Letizia Cinganotto — 2025-12-19

Grounded in recent developments related to Artificial Intelligence (AI) and its growing impact on education, this study investigates how CLIL (Content and Language Integrated Learning) teachers perceive and apply AI in lesson planning and classroom practice. Drawing on training initiatives on CLIL carried out during the 2024/25 academic year, the research explores how teachers are using AI to address common challenges, such as time constraints in planning, the need for personalized education, adapting materials to the actual students’ levels of competence, managing immediate and effective feedback. During the research a mixed-methods approach was used, combining a quantitative survey involving 249 teachers with qualitative interviews conducted with four experienced CLIL teachers. Thematic analysis of the interviews and open-ended survey responses indicates a generally optimistic view of the potential of AI to enrich student engagement, support personalized learning, enhance language and content acquisition and digital competence. Teachers highlighted the efficiency and adaptability of AI tools in creating dynamic and accessible resources. However, they also raised concerns about inadequate training, limited technological infrastructure, and the absence of clear implementation policies on AI. Overall, the study shows the importance of comprehensive investment in professional development, school resources, and strategic planning to ensure that AI can be effectively integrated into daily teaching practice and foster CLIL pedagogy.

How “Sincere” Was Steinbeck? Conceptual and Stylistic Arrangements in William T. Vollmann’s The Lucky Star and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath

Ali Dehdarirad — 2025-12-19

Concentrating on The Lucky Star (2020) and The Grapes of Wrath (1939), this paper aims to analyze how William T. Vollmann’s writing style might have benefited from and/or bears resemblance to that of John Steinbeck’s from conceptual and stylistic points of view. In 2009, Vollmann suggested that “Steinbeck was the most American of us all” (260). Interestingly, what seems to fascinate him about Steinbeck is “his sincerity” (Ibid.: 259) – a concept that brings together the novelists’ ideas about America with a kind of empathetic knowledge that aspires to truth and resistance to abusive power. Considering Vollmann’s laudatory observations regarding Steinbeck’s writing, it is worth scrutinizing the linguistic and stylistic strategies that he employs to highlight the moral qualities in his works. Such an analysis indicates resonances between Vollmann’s oeuvre and the “New Sincerity” in American fiction. Furthermore, it helps better understand the affinities between his writing and Steinbeck’s “sincerity”.

Are NMT and LLMs effective in the translation of dialogues?

Patrizia Giampieri — 2025-12-19

AI has made huge strides forward and is increasingly applied in language learning and audiovisual translation. This paper explores the quality of the machine- and LLMs-driven translation of excerpts of naturally occurring conversations scrutinised by scholars. The dialogues are sourced from literature analyses and examples. After outlining the traits of spoken language, this paper delves into an examination of the renderings of the transcripts of spoken interactions from Italian into American English. To do so, the DeepL NMT platform and the ChatGPT and Gemini chatbots are taken into account. The paper findings bring to the fore three main aspects: 1) NMT is qualitatively less accurate and reliable than LLMs-generated translations; 2) human intervention in LLMS-driven output is necessary because of sporadic inconsistencies and mistranslations, and 3) LLMs prompts must be written carefully and mindfully in order to obtain consistent and accurate results, as unspecific prompts may give rise to a less satisfactory output.

Knowledge with ‘Practical Cash-Value:’ Emerson’s Lectures and the Cultural Market of Nineteenth-Century America

Daphne Orlandi — 2025-12-19

One of the founding fathers of American literature, the essayist and philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson was, arguably, the most influential public intellectual of nineteenth-century America. This article explores Emerson’s ideological struggle in participating in a project that, despite its educational mission, was also a profit-driven initiative which exemplified the materialism he so frequently and vehemently denounced. I argue that Emerson’s participation in the capitalist commodification of culture for financial gain and, more generally, his engagement with the capitalist practices of what Jürgen Habermas calls “the public sphere” was a strategic effort to balance materialism with the cultivation of a vibrant cultural environment. Approaching the lyceum as the privileged site where to engage on both the rhetorical and pedagogical level with what he called a “convertible audience” (Emerson 1960-82, 7:265), Emerson used the public lecture to give a “practical ‘cash-value’” to his ideas and to exhort his fellow Americans to put theory into work.

“Daccapo la mia noia calunniava il destino”. Landolfi, la Noia e il Desiderio di arma

Giovanni Salvagnini Zanazzo — 2025-12-19

Beginning with the scene in LA BIERE DU PECHEUR in which Ginevra fails to shoot the protagonist, the article investigates the function of the gun in Landolfi’s narrative work. It argues that, in addition to the crisis dimension characteristic of this author, the gun also possesses a symbolic value: it represents, for a self immersed in ennui, a possibility to escape the immobility of his existential situation. Through an overview of various Landolfi’s texts, in fact, we suggest that the author develops a sort of impossible “Desire for the gun”, as the gun would finally lead to the occurrence of an event, able to offer to the self a miraculous salvation.

Allegoria e figura tra ellenismo e cristianesimo antico

Giuseppe Santesarti — 2025-12-19

To the study of the philosopher or philologist who sets out to research the earliest and most important modes of interpretation of pagan and Christian sacred texts, the investigation of the allegorical device in the pagan sphere and the figural device in the Christian sphere is imposed before any other analysis. The aim of this essay will be to exhibit the genesis and fundamental characters of these two different hermeneutical articulations, without failing to point out the differences between them as much as between the theological backgrounds and conceptions of history on which the tropes stand out. We will first proceed with the analysis of the pagan allegorical device and then with the discussion of the figural one, concluding by hinting at the trajectories that these two tropes will travel until the Middle Ages.

Ex-isles: Joyce and Neruda, a Literary Entanglement

Enrico Terrinoni — 2025-12-19

The intersection of James Joyce and Pablo Neruda, two exilic writers from vastly different traditions, presents a compelling yet underexplored connection; and yet, the relationship has seldom been investigated, even though Neruda can be numbered among Joyce’s translators. Despite their disparate origins, their works reveal intriguing links in terms of themes, literary techniques, and shared explorations of human experience. While direct evidence of interaction is limited, there are a few points of contact showing how their artistic journeys and thematic resonances transcend geographic and cultural divides. This essay also examines how Joyce and Neruda’s shared preoccupations with exile, imagination, and creativity illuminate profound similarities in their artistic visions.

Status Quaestionis

Galaxies sonores: études phonético-phonologiques en hommage à Enrica Galazzi

Sur le parcours sinueux de l’alphabet phonétique international aux États-Unis

L’“ortograf fonétik” de Raymond Queneau dans Zazie dans le métro (1959)

La prononciation du locuteur natif au prisme du plurilinguisme: poncif sur la production versus enthymème sur la perception

Liaisons en [n], hiatus et perception de la marque. Le cas de le mien, le tien et le sien

Les futures interprètes italophones à l’épreuve des voyelles nasales du français: prononciation et enjeux professionnels

“[soupir] Ah, la *prononce* de les des nasales [rire]”: une étude IPFC sur les voyelles nasales auprès d’étudiants italophones

Silvia Baroni, Leggere la letteratura illustrata. Pratiche e voci (1830-1890), Milano, edizioni del verri, 2024, 174 pp., € 18,00

Antonio Ghislanzoni, Le memorie di un gatto. Romanzo sociale, a cura di R. Colombi, Roma, Officina Libraria, 2024, 152 pp., € 15,00

Rossana Chianura, Il romanzo genealogico, con una Prefazione di Emanuele Zinato, Milano/Udine, Mimesis Edizioni, 2024, 336 pp., € 32,00

Guido Scaravilli, Soggettività e Quarto Stato. Modalità della rappresentazione interiore nella narrativa realista e naturalista, Lausanne, Peter Lang, 2024, 442 pp., € 59,95

Galaxies sonores: études phonético-phonologiques en hommage à Enrica Galazzi

Il tema della conversione in Ivanhoe di Walter Scott e nel Rabbi di Bacherach di Heinrich Heine

AI-CLIL: Artificial Intelligence for CLIL methodology

How “Sincere” Was Steinbeck? Conceptual and Stylistic Arrangements in William T. Vollmann’s The Lucky Star and John Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath

Are NMT and LLMs effective in the translation of dialogues?

Knowledge with ‘Practical Cash-Value:’ Emerson’s Lectures and the Cultural Market of Nineteenth-Century America

“Daccapo la mia noia calunniava il destino”. Landolfi, la Noia e il Desiderio di arma

Allegoria e figura tra ellenismo e cristianesimo antico

Ex-isles: Joyce and Neruda, a Literary Entanglement

“[soupir] Ah, la prononce de les des nasales [rire]”: une étude IPFC sur les voyelles nasales auprès d’étudiants italophones