How is the surname Cucurella of the footballer Marc Cucurella pronounced in Catalan? Is the e pronounced /e/ (is -ella a diminutive suffix here?) or /ɛ/?
The DCVB also quotes /e/ for cucurell but it just quotes the pronouciation in Majorca and it doesn't talk about the pronounciation elsewhere.I've never heard it but I would pronounce it with /e/.
The words in -ella I'm thinking in are all of them with /e/, so I guess it must be /kuku'ɾeʎa/ in western dialects, /kuku'ɾeʎə/ in the eastern ones.
Yes, true; in "short" words with no masculine in -ell there are some.Most are with /e/ indeed. So I'd say /kuku'ɾeʎə/ too.
Very few common ones are with /ɛ/, at least in Central Catalan: cella, orella, ovella, abella...