/t͡ʃ/ and [ʃː] from geminate /ʃʃ/: lacerò 's/he ripped' vs. lascerò 'I will leave'. In nonstandard varieties of Central and Southern Italian, some stops at the end of a syllable completely assimilate to the following consonant. For example, a Venetian might say tecnica as or in violation of normal Italian consonant contact restrictions, while a Florentine would likely pronounce tecnica as , a Roman on a range from to (in Southern Italian, complex clusters usually are separated by a vowel: a Neapolitan would say , a Sicilian ). Similarly, although the cluster has developed historically as through assimilation, a learned word such as ictus will be pronounced by some, by others. In popular (non-Tuscan) Central and Southern Italian speech, and tend to always be geminated ( and ) when between two vowels, or a vowel and a sonorant (, , , or ). Sometimes this is also used in written language, e.g. writing robba instead of roba ('property'), to suggest a regional accent, though this spelling is considered incorrect. In Tuscany and beyond in Central and Southern Italy, intervocalic non-geminate is realized as (parallel to realized as described above). The two phonemes and have merged in many varieties of Italian: when between two vowels within the same word, it tends to always be pronounced in Northern Italy, and in Central and Southern Italy (except in the Arbëreshë community). A notable example is the word casa ('house'): in Northern Italy it is pronounced ; in Southern-Central Italy it's pronounced . In several Southern varieties, voiceless stops tend to be voiced if following a sonorant, as an influence of the still largely spoken regional languages: campo is often pronounced , and Antonio is frequently . The various Tuscan, Corsican and Central Italian dialects are, to some extent, the closest ones to Standard Italian in terms of linguistic features, since the latter is based on a somewhat polished form of Florentine. Phonological development Very little research has been done on the earliest stages of phonological development in Italian. This article primarily describes phonological development after the first year of life. See the main article on phonological development for a description of first year stages. Many of the earliest stages are thought to be universal to all infants. Phoneme inventory Word-final consonants are rarely produced during the early stages of word production. Consonants are usually found in word-initial position, or in intervocalic position. 17