Enhancing stressed /a/ low frequency components in the context of sonorants

In this article two main topics are addressed: the treatment of vowel-sonorant interaction processes and, as a crucial theoretical point, the nature of phonological representations. As to the frst point, data from some Italo-Romance and Romansh varieties are examined, which involve the relation between segmental phonological content and its prosodic manifestation. We examine the cavity and duration properties of stressed nuclei in contexts preceding a sonorant and in contexts involving the acoustic space associated with long nuclei. Nasal contexts favour the insertion of a cavity component triggering F1 lowering effects in the vowel. Liquid contexts favour the centralisation of the stressed nucleus by sharing of the [A] element. We conclude that the colour and length properties associated to the stressed nucleus license a second cavity component, manifesting its licenser role in the prosodic domain. We propose that in the assimilatory processes triggering the downward shif of F1 in vowels in nasal contexts, the element [Lf1], low-frequency F1, is involved. As to the phonological representations, a point recently discussed in the literature, we have concentrate on the relation between the prosodic structure and the melodic content of segments.