DOCSLIB.ORG

The Pennsylvania State University the Graduate School Department

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
The Pennsylvania State University the Graduate School Department The Pennsylvania State University The Graduate School Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese HIATUS RESOLUTION IN SPANISH: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY A Dissertation in Spanish by Benjamin J. Souza © 2010 Benjamin J. Souza Submitted in Partial Fulfillment\ of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy May 2010 The Dissertation of Benjamin J. Souza was reviewed and approved* by the following: Henry Gerfen Associate Professor of Spanish and Linguistics Dissertation Advisor Chair of Committee Head of the Department of Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese Paola E. Giuli Dussias Associate Professor of Spanish, Linguistics, and Psychology John Lipski Edwin Erle Sparks Professor of Spanish Richard Page Associate Professor of German and Linguistics *Signatures are on file in the Graduate School iii ABSTRACT In Spanish, adjacent vowels across and within word boundaries are either in hiatus or form a diphthong. Generally, when either of the unstressed high vowels /i/ and /u/ appears next to any of the other vowels /e/, /a/, or /o/ the result is a diphthong (i.e., puerta ‘door’ > [pwer.ta], miel ‘honey’ > [mjel], and so on). All other combinations of the vowels /i, e, a, o, u/ (along with their orthographically-accented counterparts where possible, /í, é, á, ó, ú/) typically remain in separate syllables and are said to be in hiatus (i.e., teatro ‘theater’ > [te.a.tro], poeta ‘poet’ > [po.e.ta], país ‘country’ > [pa.ís], etc.). When speaking, however, vowel combinations that are supposed to be in hiatus often are not, such that teatro [te.a.tro], for example, is reported to be pronounced [tea.tro] or even [tja.tro]; se aman [se.a.man] might become [sea.man] or [sja.man], and so on— a phenomenon referred to as hiatus resolution. Previous accounts of hiatus resolution have claimed that there are a number of different possible phonetic outcomes of hiatus resolution with most authors finding that hiatus resolution typically results in a) the formation of a diphthong, b) vowel deletion, or c) maintenance of hiatus (Jenkins 1999, Aguilar 2003, Alba 2006, Díaz-Campos et al. 2006). Some of these same accounts have also suggested that there are a number of factors that predict when hiatus resolution is likely to happen. These include which specific vowels are found in the VV sequence, and which vowel(s) (if any) receive stress (Jenkins 1999). Other factors have been investigated as possible catalysts for either hiatus resolution or maintenance iv including dialectal differences (Lipski 1994, Jenkins 1999, Hualde 2005, Alba 2006, Díaz-Campos et al. 2006, Michnowicz 2007, among others), individual speaker differences (e.g., Quilis 1981, Hualde et al. 2002), and differences in socioeconomic levels (e.g., Matluck 1995, Díaz-Campos et al. 2006), speech rate, and carefulness of speech. It is readily agreed upon that the faster one speaks and the less care with which one speaks the more likely vowel sequences in hiatus are resolved (e.g., Navarro- Tomás 1968b, Harris 1969, Jenkins 1999, Alba 2006). An additional factor that has been reported to affect hiatus resolution is frequency. Although it has received less attention in the traditional hiatus/diphthong literature, recently some authors have found that more frequent vowel sequences, words, and/or word strings tend to show both a higher propensity to resolve hiatus, as well as to show a higher degree of vowel resolution (Jenkins 1999, Aguilar 2003, Alba 2006, Díaz-Campos et al. 2006). Both Jenkins (1999) and Alba (2006) found that the more frequent word strings in their corpora showed greater tendency to resolve hiatus and to resolve it to a greater degree (i.e., more resolution, or even more unlike the original vowels in hiatus). These findings claim that hiatus resolution is not brought on only by fast and/or careless speech but that frequency might also be playing an important role in predicting what (and to what degree) vowel sequences, words, or word strings will undergo hiatus resolution. A 2x2 experimental investigation of 36 Mexican Spanish speakers was conducted to investigate via word-naming tasks the role of frequency (high vs. low) and speech rate (fast vs. slow) in the resolution of within-word [ea] sequences in Spanish. Words and vowel sequences were measured for overall word duration and VV v sequence duration. Formant data was also measured for the vowel sequences to determine the nature of the resolution (diphthong-like, or not). The results reveal that fast speech rate significantly modulated both temporal measures as well as formant measures. The results also reveal a significant modulation of temporal and formant measures for the high frequency words. Phonetic environment also significantly affected the modulation of the vowel sequences. The nature of the resolution in the fast speech condition and in the high frequency words was away from diphthongization and toward vowel coalescence. The results suggest that frequency is, indeed, and important factor in the resolution of [ea] sequences in Spanish, and lend support to a usage-based model of phonology which posits that high-usage items are likely to undergo more phonological modifications than their low-usage counterparts. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS LIST OF FIGURES ........................................................................................................ ix LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................ xiii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS .......................................................................................... xiv Chapter 1 Diphthongization and hiatus in Spanish .......................................................... 1 1.1 Overview ........................................................................................................... 1 1.2 Diphthongs and hiatus in Spanish ................................................................... 10 1.2.1 Exceptional hiatus and non-standard diphthongization ........................... 15 1.3 Factors that influence exceptional hiatus and non-standard diphthongization 18 1.4 A Usage-based model, frequency, and emergentism ...................................... 29 1.4.1 Frequency effects in language ................................................................. 31 1.4.2 Predictions about frequency and hiatus resolution .................................. 34 1.5 Experimentally-based language research ........................................................ 36 1.6 Summary ......................................................................................................... 39 Chapter 2 Methods ........................................................................................................ 41 2.1 Overview ......................................................................................................... 41 2.1.1 Participants ............................................................................................... 42 2.1.2 Equipment ................................................................................................ 42 2.1.3 Variables .................................................................................................. 42 2.2 Experiments ..................................................................................................... 43 2.2.1 Experiment 1: Slow speech ...................................................................... 44 2.2.2 Experiment 2: Fast speech ....................................................................... 45 2.3 Word list selection ........................................................................................... 46 2.3.1 VV sequence ............................................................................................ 47 2.3.2 Frequency of items ................................................................................... 50 2.3.3 Stress, number of syllables, and phonetic environment ........................... 53 2.4 Measurement of phonetic properties ............................................................... 55 2.4.1 Word duration .......................................................................................... 56 2.4.2 Vowel duration......................................................................................... 59 2.5 Summary ......................................................................................................... 64 Chapter 3 Results .......................................................................................................... 66 3.1 Overview ......................................................................................................... 66 3.2 Results: duration .............................................................................................. 68 3.2.1 Word duration .......................................................................................... 68 3.2.2 Phoneme and syllable count..................................................................... 70 vii 3.2.3 VV duration ............................................................................................. 72 3.3 Results: formant values ................................................................................... 75 3.3.1 Results for F1 of [e]: height dimension ................................................... 81 3.3.2 Results for F2 - F1 of [e]: frontness/backness dimension........................ 84 3.3.3 Results for F1 of [a]: height dimension ................................................... 87 3.3.4 Results for F2
Load more

Recommended publications
  • 4. R-Influence on Vowels
    4. R-influence on vowels Before you study this chapter, check whether you are familiar with the following terms: allophone, centring diphthong, complementary distribution, diphthong, distribution, foreignism, fricative, full vowel, GA, hiatus, homophone, Intrusive-R, labial, lax, letter-to-sound rule, Linking-R, low-starting diphthong, minimal pair, monophthong, morpheme, nasal, non-productive suffix, non-rhotic accent, phoneme, productive suffix, rhotic accent, R-dropping, RP, tense, triphthong This chapter mainly focuses on the behaviour of full vowels before an /r/, the phonological and letter-to-sound rules related to this behaviour and some further phenomena concerning vowels. As it is demonstrated in Chapter 2 the two main accent types of English, rhotic and non-rhotic accents, are most easily distinguished by whether an /r/ is pronounced in all positions or not. In General American, a rhotic accent, all /r/'s are pronounced while in Received Pronunciation, a non-rhotic variant, only prevocalic ones are. Besides this, these – and other – dialects may also be distinguished by the behaviour of stressed vowels before an /r/, briefly mentioned in the previous chapter. To remind the reader of the most important vowel classes that will be referred to we repeat one of the tables from Chapter 3 for convenience. Tense Lax Monophthongs i, u, 3 , e, , , , , , , 1, 2 Diphthongs and , , , , , , , , triphthongs , Chapter 4 Recall that we have come up with a few generalizations in Chapter 3, namely that all short vowels are lax, all diphthongs and triphthongs are tense, non- high long monophthongs are lax, except for //, which behaves in an ambiguous way: sometimes it is tense, in other cases it is lax.
    [Show full text]
  • An Analysis of Vowels Across Word Boundaries in Veracruz, Mexican Spanish
    An Analysis of Vowels across Word Boundaries in Veracruz, Mexican Spanish Janet M. Smith, Tanya L. Flores, Michael S. Gradoville Indiana University Bloomington Abstract This project examines vowels in hiatus across word boundaries in Spanish. Our findings are based on a corpus of seven female speakers of the Veracruz variety of Mexican Spanish. Previous research on vowel transitions has proposed several possible outcomes for vowel combinations across word boundaries in Spanish: hiatus, diphthong, reduction or deletion of one vowel, or creation of a new vowel. The purpose of this project was to investigate the conditions under which these outcomes actually occur in running speech using spectrographic analysis. In terms of hiatus, our results support those of a study conducted on the Spanish of northern New Mexico/Southern Colorado by Alba (2006), which concluded that maintaining hiatus was not the preferred outcome. Likewise, in the present study, 94% of our 148 tokens showed non-maintenance of hiatus. Our data did not clearly reveal a single preferred outcome among the non-maintenance tokens, but rather a mixture of tendencies. These varied widely by vowel combination and speaker. Another surprising outcome that deserves attention is centralization. Centralization was present in all four vowel combinations, occurring more frequently than anticipated, given that it is thought not to occur in Spanish. 1. Introduction Our project1 examines vowels in hiatus across word boundaries in the Spanish of seven female speakers of the Veracruz variety of Mexican Spanish. Studies that examine this topic are rare, especially within the realm of laboratory phonology using spectrographic analysis. Prior experiments on the topic have utilized aural perceptions to distinguish vowel sequences in hiatus from those that are diphthongs and it is only recently that 1 We are very grateful to Dr.
    [Show full text]
  • L Vocalisation As a Natural Phenomenon
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by University of Essex Research Repository L Vocalisation as a Natural Phenomenon Wyn Johnson and David Britain Essex University [email protected] [email protected] 1. Introduction The sound /l/ is generally characterised in the literature as a coronal lateral approximant. This standard description holds that the sounds involves contact between the tip of the tongue and the alveolar ridge, but instead of the air being blocked at the sides of the tongue, it is also allowed to pass down the sides. In many (but not all) dialects of English /l/ has two allophones – clear /l/ ([l]), roughly as described, and dark, or velarised, /l/ ([…]) involving a secondary articulation – the retraction of the back of the tongue towards the velum. In dialects which exhibit this allophony, the clear /l/ occurs in syllable onsets and the dark /l/ in syllable rhymes (leaf [li˘f] vs. feel [fi˘…] and table [te˘b…]). The focus of this paper is the phenomenon of l-vocalisation, that is to say the vocalisation of dark /l/ in syllable rhymes 1. feel [fi˘w] table [te˘bu] but leaf [li˘f] 1 This process is widespread in the varieties of English spoken in the South-Eastern part of Britain (Bower 1973; Hardcastle & Barry 1989; Hudson and Holloway 1977; Meuter 2002, Przedlacka 2001; Spero 1996; Tollfree 1999, Trudgill 1986; Wells 1982) (indeed, it appears to be categorical in some varieties there) and which extends to many other dialects including American English (Ash 1982; Hubbell 1950; Pederson 2001); Australian English (Borowsky 2001, Borowsky and Horvath 1997, Horvath and Horvath 1997, 2001, 2002), New Zealand English (Bauer 1986, 1994; Horvath and Horvath 2001, 2002) and Falkland Island English (Sudbury 2001).
    [Show full text]
  • Contrastive Modelling of the Intonation of Recapitulatory Echo Interrogative Sentences in Modern American English and Cuban Spanish
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Nottingham ePrints Garcia Romero, Gilberto (2013) Contrastive modelling of the intonation of recapitulatory echo interrogative sentences in modern American English and Cuban Spanish. MA(Res) thesis, University of Nottingham. Access from the University of Nottingham repository: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/13527/1/AN_INTONATIONAL_ANALYSIS_OF_THE_INTERR OGATIVE_SYSTEMS_IN_MODERN_ENGLISH_AND_CUBAN_SPANISH_2012.pdf Copyright and reuse: The Nottingham ePrints service makes this work by researchers of the University of Nottingham available open access under the following conditions. · Copyright and all moral rights to the version of the paper presented here belong to the individual author(s) and/or other copyright owners. · To the extent reasonable and practicable the material made available in Nottingham ePrints has been checked for eligibility before being made available. · Copies of full items can be used for personal research or study, educational, or not- for-profit purposes without prior permission or charge provided that the authors, title and full bibliographic details are credited, a hyperlink and/or URL is given for the original metadata page and the content is not changed in any way. · Quotations or similar reproductions must be sufficiently acknowledged. Please see our full end user licence at: http://eprints.nottingham.ac.uk/end_user_agreement.pdf A note on versions: The version presented here may differ from the published version or from the version of record. If you wish to cite this item you are advised to consult the publisher’s version. Please see the repository url above for details on accessing the published version and note that access may require a subscription.
    [Show full text]
  • The American Intrusive L
    THE AMERICAN INTRUSIVE L BRYAN GICK University of British Columbia The well-known sandhi phenomenon known as intrusive r has been one of the longest-standing problems in English phonology. Recent work has brought to light a uniquely American contribution to this discussion: the intrusive l (as in draw[l]ing for drawing and bra[l] is for bra is in southern Pennsylvania, compared to draw[r]ing and bra[r] is, respectively, in British Received Pronunciation [RP]). In both instances of intrusion, a historically unattested liquid consonant (r or l) intervenes in the hiatus between a morpheme-final nonhigh vowel and a following vowel, either across or within words. Not surprisingly, this process interacts crucially with the well- known cases of /r/-vocalization (e.g., Kurath and McDavid 1961; Labov 1966; Labov, Yaeger, and Steiner 1972; Fowler 1986) and /l/-vocalization (e.g., Ash 1982a, 1982b), which have been identified as important markers of sociolinguistic stratification in New York City, Philadelphia, and else- where. However, previous discussion of the intrusive l (Gick 1999) has focused primarily on its phonological implications, with almost no attempt to describe its geographic, dialectal, and sociolinguistic context. This study marks such an attempt. In particular, it argues that the intrusive l is an instance of phonological change in progress. Descriptively, the intrusive l parallels the intrusive r in many respects. Intrusive r may be viewed simplistically as the extension by analogy of a historically attested final /r/ to words historically ending in a vowel (gener- ally this applies only to the set of non-glide-final vowels: /@, a, O/).
    [Show full text]
  • Constraints on Structual Borrowing in a Multilingual Contact Situation
    University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons IRCS Technical Reports Series Institute for Research in Cognitive Science 5-1-2005 Constraints on Structual Borrowing in a Multilingual Contact Situation Tara S. Sanchez University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports Part of the Linguistics Commons Sanchez, Tara S., "Constraints on Structual Borrowing in a Multilingual Contact Situation" (2005). IRCS Technical Reports Series. 4. https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports/4 University of Pennsylvania Institute for Research in Cognitive Science Technical Report No. IRCS-05-01 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/ircs_reports/4 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Constraints on Structual Borrowing in a Multilingual Contact Situation Abstract Many principles of structural borrowing have been proposed, all under qualitative theories. Some argue that linguistic conditions must be met for borrowing to occur (‘universals’); others argue that aspects of the socio-demographic situation are more relevant than linguistic considerations (e.g. Thomason and Kaufman 1988). This dissertation evaluates the roles of both linguistic and social factors in structural borrowing from a quantitative, variationist perspective via a diachronic and ethnographic examination of the language contact situation on Aruba, Bonaire, and Curaçao, where the berian creole, Papiamentu, is in contact with Spanish, Dutch, and English. Data are fro m texts (n=171) and sociolinguistic interviews (n=129). The progressive, the passive construction, and focus fronting are examined. In addition, variationist methods were applied in a novel way to the system of verbal morphology. The degree to which borrowed morphemes are integrated into Papiamentu was noted at several samplings over a 100-year time span.
    [Show full text]
  • Rhythmic Syncope and Opacity in Mojeño Trinitario
    Phonological Data & Analysis Volume 1, Article 2: 1–25 (2019) pɗɑ https://doi.org/10.3765/pda.v1art2.2 Received 7 December 2017; revised 19 October 2018; accepted 29 January 2019. © 2019 Françoise Rose. Published by the Linguistic Society of America with permission of the author under a CC BY 3.0 license. Rhythmic syncope and opacity in Mojeño Trinitario Françoise Rose* Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique – [email protected] This paper presents rhythmic syncope in Mojeño Trinitario, an Arawak language spoken in lowland Bolivia. In this language, every vowel that is in a weak prosodic position can syncopate. The syncope pattern of Mojeño Trinitario is remarkable for several reasons. First, it involves a regular, categorical and complete deletion rather than a statistical reduction of vowels. Second, it applies similarly to words with either of two stress patterns: iambic words, which make up the great majority of words, and trochaic ones, much less numerous. Third, a great variety of consonant sequences are the result of syncope, and syllabification applies again after syncope. Fourth, rhythmic syncope actually underapplies: almost half of the vowels that are in a position to syncopate are maintained, and vowel quality plays a statistical role in immunity to syncope. Fifth, due to a rich morphology and a set of complex phonotactic rules applying sequentially, syncope leads to extreme opacity. The data presented in this paper in a theory-neutral way contribute to the typology of rhythmic syncope. It will also be of interest to phonologists considering constraint-based vs. derivational models of phonology. Keywords: phonology; stress; prosody; rhythmic syncope; Mojeño (Arawak) 1 Introduction Mojeño is an Arawak language spoken in lowland Bolivia.
    [Show full text]
  • Palatals in Spanish and French: an Analysis Rachael Gray
    Florida State University Libraries Honors Theses The Division of Undergraduate Studies 2012 Palatals in Spanish and French: An Analysis Rachael Gray Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] Abstract (Palatal, Spanish, French) This thesis deals with palatals from Latin into Spanish and French. Specifically, it focuses on the diachronic history of each language with a focus on palatals. I also look at studies that have been conducted concerning palatals, and present a synchronic analysis of palatals in modern day Spanish and French. The final section of this paper focuses on my research design in second language acquisition of palatals for native French speakers learning Spanish. 2 THE FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF ARTS AND SCIENCES PALATALS IN SPANISH AND FRENCH: AN ANALYSIS BY: RACHAEL GRAY A Thesis submitted to the Department of Modern Languages in partial fulfillment of the requirements for graduation with Honors in the Major Degree Awarded: 3 Spring, 2012 The members of the Defense Committee approve the thesis of Rachael Gray defended on March 21, 2012 _____________________________________ Professor Carolina Gonzaléz Thesis Director _______________________________________ Professor Gretchen Sunderman Committee Member _______________________________________ Professor Eric Coleman Outside Committee Member 4 Contents Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................................... 5 0.
    [Show full text]
  • Phonetic Explanation Without Compromise the Evolution of Mussau Syncope
    Phonetic explanation without compromise The evolution of Mussau syncope Juliette Blevins Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, Leipzig Blust (2005, 2007a, 2007b) questions the phonetic motivation of a number of well-attested sound changes. One sound change in this class is the purported case of stressed vowel syncope in Mussau, an Oceanic language (Blust 1984, 2001, 2007a). Regular syncopes typically target unstressed vowels. By contrast, loss of stressed vowels is difficult to motivate, due to their inherent prominence. Close inspection of Mussau historical phonology suggests that, at its origins, syncope was limited to unstressed vowels, with subsequent developments ob- scuring its original phonetic motivation. Under the proposed analysis, the Neo- grammarian insistence on phonetically motivated sound change is maintained. Keywords: sound change, phonetic motivation, naturalness, vowel syncope, Mussau 1. The general problem Are all sound changes phonetically motivated? The Neogrammarians believed so, and catalogued many instances where sound change was of a purely phonetic nature, triggered by the effects of surrounding sounds, accent, syllabic position, and general articulatory tendencies (Osthoff & Brugman 1878, Paul 1880). While Neogrammarian phonetic explanation was based primarily on the mechanisms of speech production, a range of students who studied in Leipzig during the latter part of the 19th century, from Baudouin de Courtenay to Gustaf E. Karsten, soon embraced perception as an additional explanatory mechanism of phonetically based sound change.1 In more recent times, further evidence has accumulated for 1. On Baudouin’s conception of misperception, see Blevins (2007a:144). Karsten, a student of Paul’s, presents an eloquent and strikingly modern exemplar-based view of sound change and analogy in which perception and misperception are central in his 1894 paper “The Psychological Basis of Phonetic Law and Analogy”.
    [Show full text]
  • Opaque Distributional Generalisations in Tundra Nenets ∗
    Opaque distributional generalisations in Tundra Nenets ∗ Peter Staroverov August 1, 2020 Abstract Based on primary data from Tundra Nenets, this paper explores phonological patterns which seem to require restrictions on the input, and thus present a particular challenge to Optimality Theory. In these patterns, a contrastive segment appears only in the environments where it is also derived by active alternations in the language. I illustrate this with with the behaviour of Tundra Nenets /k/, and argue that these patterns can be analysed as distributional generalisa- tions that hold only at early derivational levels. A Stratal OT analysis is proposed. Tundra Nenets also presents a pattern which appears to involve unnatural classes, but is reanalysed with only natural class alternations on my account. 1 Introduction Classical Optimality Theory (OT) allows no restrictions on the input – a principle labelled RICHNESS OF THE BASE (RoTB) by Prince & Smolensky (2004) and criticized by Vaysman (2002); Hansson (2003); Rasin & Katzir (2017). Despite the criticism, no real alternatives to Richness of the Base have been proposed within OT, the existing computational implementa- tions of OT evaluation and typology rely on it (Staubs et al., 2010; Hayes et al., 2013; Prince et al., 2018), and the synchronic analyses of sound patterns presuppose it. In this paper, I explore a particular kind of phonological pattern where a contrastive seg- ment emerges only in the environments where it is also derived by an alternation, using the example of /k/ in Tundra Nenets. As argued by McCarthy (2005), such patterns call for in- corporating input restrictions in the phonological theory, against RoTB .
    [Show full text]
  • Review Article
    Studies in the Linguistic Sciences Volume 29, Number 2 (Fall 1999) REVIEW ARTICLE Christina Y. Bethin. Slavic Prosody: Language Change and Phonological Theory. (Cambridge Studies in Linguistics, 86.) New York: Cambridge University Press, 1998. Pp. xvi + 349. Price: $69.95. ISBN 0521591481. Frank Y. Gladney University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [email protected] Professor Bethin' s ambitious and challenging book has a chapter titled 'The syl- lable in Slavic: form and function' (12-111), one titled 'Beyond the syllable: prominence relations' (112-87), and a miscellany titled 'Theoretical considera- tions' (188-265). They are preceded by a preface and introduction (xii-11) and followed by end notes (266-301) and an imposing list of references (302-46). The Slavic of her title includes Proto-Slavic (up to the middle of our first millennium), Common Slavic (6th-8th centuries), and Late Common Slavic (9th- 12th centu- ries). Chapter 1 is concerned with the development of diphthongal syllable rhymes. Displaying an encyclopedic knowledge of the Slavistic literature, Bethin reviews the history of how oral, nasal, and liquid diphthongs were monoph- thongized, recasting it in the framework of autosegmental phonology. These syl- lable rhymes, she argues, were shaped by the interplay of various constraints on syllable structure. 'Proto-Slavic had a front/back, a high/nonhigh, and a long/short opposition in vowels', quite traditionally begins the section titled 'Monophthongization' (39). These features defined a square system with four vowels: [+high, -back] i, [+high, +back] u, [-high, -back] e, and [-high, +back] o. Bethin and many other Slavists use the more familiar symbols e, o, and a for the nonhigh vowels, but I find e and a useful as a reminder that Proto-Slavic fused PIE *o and *a into a sin- gle nonhigh back vowel and so converted the inherited triangular system with three degrees of opening to a square system with two.
    [Show full text]
  • A History of English Phonology
    A History of English Phonology Charles Jones >Pt> PPP PPP LONGMAN LONDON AND NEW YORK Contents Preface ix Acknowledgements xi 1 Aims, methods and model i 1.1 Aims i 1.2 Method 4 1.3 Model 5 2 The Early English period: the beginnings to the thirteenth century 9 2.1 The nature of the data 9 2.2 Vowel lengthening processes in Old English 15 2.2.1 Compensatory lengthening 18 2.2.2 Lengthenings in more general fricative contexts • 19 2.2.3 Stressed vowel lengthening in nasal sonorant contexts 21 2.2.4 Lengthening in nasal and non-nasal sonorant contexts: Late Old English hontorganic lengthening 24 2.2.5 The reconstruction of vowel length 26 2.2.6 The date of the homorganic lengthening process 29 2.3 Diphthongization processes in Old English 33 2.3.1 Old English Breaking 38 2.3.2 Breaking of long stressed vowels 45 2.3.3 Causes of this diphthongization in pre-[x], [r], [1] contexts 47 2.3.4 Did this diphthongization ever really happen? 49 VI CONTENTS 2.3.5 Exceptions to the Breaking process 51 2.3.6 Breaking in other fricative contexts 54 2.4 Monophthongization processes: Late Old English developments to Breaking-produced diphthongs 58 2.4.1 The instability of contextually derived alternations 61 2.4.2 Monophthongization and raising as a unified process 62 2.4.3 Middle English monophthongization processes 64 2.4.4 The Middle English development of the Old English [eo] diphthong 66 2.4.5 Special Kentish developments: syllabicity shifting - 68 2.5 Vowel harmony processes in Old English 73 2.5.1 Backness/labial harmony two: Old English Back Mutation
    [Show full text]