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Rhotic Retroflexion in Romance. Acoustic Data for an Articulation-Driven Sound Change

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Rhotic Retroflexion in Romance. Acoustic Data for an Articulation-Driven Sound Change Rhotic retroflexion in Romance. Acoustic data for an articulation-driven sound change Chiara Celata (Scuola Normale Superiore, Pisa) Abstract The retroflexion of /t(˘)r/ clusters in the Sicilian dialect is examined from an acoustic and historical point of view. The topic of consonant retroflexion has been widely investigated by Romance dialectologists and historical linguists, as well as by experimental phoneticians, but the convergence of the two sub-disciplines has only been episodic so far. This research aims at filling this gap by exploiting the resources of experimental phonetics for the purpose of diachronic reconstruction. Most studies on consonant retroflexion in the world’s languages have the explicit purpose of drawing a link between the phonological status of this consonant class and the phonetic invariance that should unambiguously define it. In these approaches, however, the large amount of variation that actually shapes the reality of phonetic events is reduced to bare labels such as ‘apicality’ or ‘falling F3’, that are fairly useless for diachronic purposes. On the other hand, it has been widely demonstrated that the only way to convinc- ingly describe retroflex articulation and capture the multiplicity of phenomena hidden behind this label is to posit a continuum of places of articulation (Ladefoged & Bhaskararao 1983, and subsequent works). Following this latter approach, this research is not aimed at providing a phonetic and phonological description of a sound class, but rather at analyzing processes of sound change that affect retroflex and other close places of articulation. 1 Introduction This paper investigates the process of consonant retroflexion in rhotic context in some Italo-Romance dialects. Acoustic data on the Sicilian cluster /t(˘)r/ are provided which may shed light on the sound change mechanisms giving rise to the retroflex outcome in several areas of the (Italo)-Romance domain. The topic of consonant retroflexion has been widely investigated by Romance dialectolo- gists and historical linguists as well as by experimental phoneticians, but the convergence of the two sub-disciplines (i.e., historical dialectology and experimental phonetics) has been epi- sodic so far. This research aims to fill this gap by exploiting the resources of experimental phonetics for the purpose of diachronic reconstruction. Empirical evidence is adduced for a crucial and much disputed, though overlooked, class of sounds using spontaneous speech produced by Sicilian speakers. In particular, acoustic data for the etymological cluster /t(˘)r/, mostly realized as [ˇ(˘)ß], are presented in comparison with those for /p(˘)r/ and /t(˘)s, t(˘)S/. The experimental findings are discussed with reference to the acoustic and articulatory features of retroflex consonants for several non-Romance languages documented in the literature. A diachronic perspective is adopted with respect to the phonetic triggers of retroflexion in a rhotic context within the Romance domain. In contrast to some recent perceptually oriented accounts, articulatory reduction will emerge as the fundamental conditioning factor. 6 Chiara Celata One of the most remarkable achievements of modern instrumental phonetics is the obser- vation of the great amount of variation characterizing linguistic production. Frequent sources of variability are found not only among different speakers of the same language, but also in the speech of a single speaker. Based on this simple but essential phenomenon, the Ohalian theory of language change (since Ohala 1981) predicts that a careful investigation of the acoustic, articulatory and aerodynamic characteristics of speech sounds should raise funda- mental questions about the nature of sound change. In other words, sound change is rooted in phonetic variability, insofar as the latter is embodied in sociolinguistic and dialectal variation, morphophonemic alternations and typological preferences. On different grounds, most studies on consonant retroflexion in the world’s languages have the explicit goal of identifying a link between the phonological status of this consonant ‘class’ and its invariant phonetic properties. According to this approach, however, a large amount of variation which shapes the reality of phonetic events is reduced to bare labels such as ‘apical- ity’ or ‘falling F3’, which are fairly useless for diachronic purposes. Moreover, it has been widely demonstrated that, especially from an articulatory point of view, the only way to con- vincingly describe retroflex articulations while capturing the multiplicity of phenomena hid- den behind this label is to posit a continuum of places of articulation (Ladefoged & Bhaskara- rao 1983, Ladefoged & Maddieson 1996: 21-30; see below, §.3). Following this latter approach, this research focuses on the fine-grained acoustic descrip- tion of the retroflex realization of the etymological cluster /tr/ as produced by several Sicilian speakers. The main goal, though, is not a phonetic and phonological description of retroflexes as a sound class, but rather an analysis of the sound change processes that affect retroflex and other close places of articulation.1 2 Retroflex consonants in Romance Retroflex articulation is generally said to be highly marked in terms of production mecha- nisms and distributional properties across languages. This is one reason why consonant retro- flexion is usually analyzed at the typological level and studied for the purpose of taxonomic representation. The groundbreaking study by D.N.S. Bhat, «Retroflexion: an areal feature», published within the Working Papers on Language Universals series in 1973, was the first and most important in a fruitful tradition of studies that were all more or less influenced by the classical typological framework developed in the course of the 1960s and 1970s. In this work, more than 150 languages are mentioned which have different retroflex segments in their sound inventory. These languages are said to belong to four major geographic areas (the In- dian peninsula, the Australian area, the Pacific coast of America and Central Africa), as well as to three minor groups (some languages in Southern Africa, some Northern Germanic lan- guages such as Swedish, Norwegian and English, and some Caucasian languages). This areal typological perspective was particularly successful and directly or indirectly adopted by all scholars working on consonant retroflexion. For example, the most detailed and exhaustive analysis of the phonetic and phonological characteristics of retroflexes in the world’s lan- 1 This work is part of my PhD Dissertation (Celata 2006, available online at http://alphalinguistica.sns.it /tesi/celata/tesi_Celata.htm). The project is an investigation of several retroflex outcomes in different Italo-Romance languages. See also Celata (2002-2003) for related issues on Corsican liquids in consonantal clusters. The retroflexion of geminate laterals in Sicilian is analyzed in Celata (forthcoming). I would like to thank P.M. Bertinetto, M. Loporcaro, M. Żygis and D. Recasens for their comments and support. Rhotic retroflexion in Romance. Acoustic data for an articulation-driven sound change 7 guages recently carried out by Hamann has been explicitly inspired by Bhat’s taxonomy (Hamann 2003a: 2). Although the author states that her study is based on a detailed scrutiny of grammars from linguistic families exhibiting consonant retroflexion processes, no refer- ence to Romance languages is ever made in spite of the fact that Romance dialectologists and philologists have been well aware of the existence of some retroflex pronunciations in Ro- mance – at least since Schneegans (1888) or Merlo (1925) just to mention the most renowned scholars of the past centuries. Romance retroflexion has been dealt with recently in essays going beyond the limits of local dialectology such as Dalbera-Stefanaggi (1991) and Maiden & Parry (1997). These circumstances, though surprising, are quite understandable if one considers that an interest in careful phonetic investigation, as well as in the phonological status, of the Italo-Romance retroflex sounds has belatedly arisen – even among scholars especially con- cerned with Romance languages in general and with Southern Italian varieties in particular. On the other hand, these are prolific research areas for historical linguists, philologists, phone- ticians and dialectologists (see Celata 2006: 42-44 for details). Retroflex consonants are observed in a relatively wide area of the Romance domain. As far as Italo-Romance is concerned, they occur in many Southern dialects spoken in Calabria, Puglia, Abruzzo and Campania, as well as in Sicilian, Sardinian, Corsican and some varieties of Northern Tuscan. Retroflex realizations are also found in Western Asturian and were probably present in Old Gascon. Voiced retroflex stops and affricates developed mostly from the geminate lateral in word medial position (e.g., Ragusa Sicilian [ka»Va͢o] standing for It. cavallo ‘horse’) and sporadically at word boundaries (e.g., Minucciano Tuscan [kweÍ »omo] for It. quell’uomo ‘that man’; [vak a »Íet˘o] for It. vado a letto ‘I go to bed’, where the gemi- nate lateral is triggered by Raddoppiamento Fonosintattico). The output of this process can be a stop [͢] or an affricate [͢Ω]. Gemination is generally preserved, but in some dialects a de- gemination process has occurred. There are also varieties in which the proto-Romance cluster /lj/, after having developed into a palatal lateral ([¥˘]), underwent a
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