Southern Salentino varieties have a five-vowel system, /i, epsilon, a, (sic), u/, exhibiting harmonic alternations in stressed mid-vowels: /epsilon/ and /(sic)/ raise to the mid-close [e] and [o], respectively, when followed by high vowels [i] and [u]. This harmony process is traditionally referred to as metaphony. Southern Salentino metaphony is characterized by variation in the way in which the unstressed [i] and [u] affect the stressed vowels /epsilon/ and /(sic)/. We examined the Southern Salentino dialect spoken in Tricase, focusing on both interspeaker and intra-speaker variation. Our primary goal is to understand the acoustic and articulatory characteristics of the metaphonic patterns and identify the features involved in this assimilatory process. Acoustically, we found that the metaphonic variant [e] has lower F1 and higher F2 values than /epsilon/, and the variant [o] exhibits lower F1 and F2 values than /(sic)/. We also show that the articulatory feature [+/- ATR] is significantly correlated with the metaphonic contrasts. Our second goal is to develop an appropriate phonological analysis of the phenomenon and describe the interacting parameters that generate the observed metaphonic variation. We argue that a key factor in the variation is the constraint against [+back, +ATR] vowels, which prevents high [+back, +ATR] triggers and/or mid [+back, +ATR] outcomes. After ruling out sociolinguistic factors, we propose that, although phonologized, the metaphonic process is still not fully normative in the community's speech, leading to both interspeaker and intra-speaker variation.
Homophony is often removed from languages to improve form-function isomorphism; this removal is known as homophone avoidance or ANTI-HOMOPHONY (AH). This article examines diachronic data from Aragonese and argues that AH, mediated by resource redistribution (ostensibly, suffix-borrowing), played a key role in the development of its verbal morphology. Of primary interest are the 1st singular (1s) and 3rd singular (3s) forms of the Pyrenean highland varieties of Ans & oacute;, Panticosa, Tella, and Benasque. While various authors have proposed that contrastive 1s and 3s have emerged as an AH effect (e.g., Ansotano tenebay similar to teneba; Benasqu & eacute;s teneba similar to tenebe; Tellano tenebe similar to teneba; as opposed to Panticuto teneba similar to teneba 'I had similar to he/she had)', AH as an organizing principle in Aragonese has not been rigorously explored, nor have the implications of AH for morphological structure been systematically evaluated in a more general sense. This study argues that AH in Aragonese draws upon distributional resources that vary across dialects, thereby mediating or impeding the resolution of 1s3s homophony. Verb data reveal how the absence of resources allows homophony to persist, though presumably in a state of tension.
This paper reconsiders Latin liquid dissimilation, which since Steriade, Donca. 1987. Redundant values. In Papers from the 23rd regional meeting of the Chicago Linguistics Society, 339-362. Chicago: Chicago Linguistics Society, has been understood as the change of the suffix -alis into -aris when there is an [l] in the base a process that is blocked by an intervening [r], but not by other consonants. Cser (2010/2020) observes that intervening noncoronal consonants also block dissimilation, for which Roberts, Philip. 2011. A proposed Latin rule insertion revisited in OT. Paper presented at the 85th annual meeting of the 85th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, 6-9. Pittsburgh: Linguistic Society of America, proposes an OT account. We critically discuss Cser's empirical claims and Roberts's theoretical account and show how the blocking of Latin liquid dissimilation by dorsal consonants, but not by labial ones, can be made to follow straightforwardly from phonological structure.
In Spanish, the most consistent correlate of lexical stress appears to be duration. Even in phrasal contexts where the pitch contour is flat over all syllables in the word (as in parentheticals) and where pitch prominence is displaced to a different syllable (under rhetorical stress), lexically stressed syllables are usually durationally enhanced. Given this, the phenomenon known as "tonada cordobesa" is of particular interest, since it involves the lengthening of the pretonic syllable, which reportedly may become considerably longer than the tonic. The question that arises is what other acoustic cues are used to convey information on the lexical prosodic pattern of the word when increased duration is disassociated from the stressed syllable. To answer this question, we acoustically analyzed relative duration and pitch of 35 words produced by eight speakers native to different cities in the province of C & oacute;rdoba, which were compared to those same words as produced by six natives of the province of Buenos Aires, where pretonic lengthening is not expected. Results revealed that tonic syllables were significantly longer than non-tonic ones in both varieties. However, the tonic-pretonic difference was smaller in C & oacute;rdoba than in Buenos Aires, indicative of pretonic lengthening. Differences in pitch change between a pretonic and a tonic were not significantly different between provinces, but an overall larger pitch change between tonic and non-tonic syllables was obtained in C & oacute;rdoba. Together, these results suggest that duration is a correlate of stress in C & oacute;rdoba, as in other Spanish varieties, and small relative duration differences due to pretonic lengthening may be enhanced by a larger pitch change. Nevertheless, sporadically we also find cases where the pretonic is longer than the tonic. In these examples, pitch-accent alignment indicates the position of the lexically stressed syllable.
