Romanian Palatalization: The Role of Place of Articulation in Perception
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Laura Spinu
Abstract
It has been proposed that the perception of palatalized consonants is influenced by their primary place of articulation. Both perceptual studies of palatalization and cross-linguistic distributional patterns suggest the existence of a markedness asymmetry: palatalized labials are more marked than palatalized coronals. This paper presents the results of a perceptual study of labial and coronal fricatives, with 22 native speakers of Romanian. It was found that, unlike Russian and Japanese listeners, Romanians exhibit higher sensitivity to the plain-palatalized contrast in labials as opposed to coronals. Thus Romanian seems to pose a challenge to the typological generalization. Several differences between Romanian and other languages with the plain/palatalized contrast are discussed. It is suggested that the different behavior of Romanian may be due to the different nature of palatalization in this language with regard to its phonetic realization and its position in the syllable (final only).
Abstract
It has been proposed that the perception of palatalized consonants is influenced by their primary place of articulation. Both perceptual studies of palatalization and cross-linguistic distributional patterns suggest the existence of a markedness asymmetry: palatalized labials are more marked than palatalized coronals. This paper presents the results of a perceptual study of labial and coronal fricatives, with 22 native speakers of Romanian. It was found that, unlike Russian and Japanese listeners, Romanians exhibit higher sensitivity to the plain-palatalized contrast in labials as opposed to coronals. Thus Romanian seems to pose a challenge to the typological generalization. Several differences between Romanian and other languages with the plain/palatalized contrast are discussed. It is suggested that the different behavior of Romanian may be due to the different nature of palatalization in this language with regard to its phonetic realization and its position in the syllable (final only).
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword vii
- Null Expletives and Case: The View from Romance 1
- On the Existence of Null Complementizers in Old French 19
- On the Lack of Transparency Effects in French 37
- On the Syllabification of Prevocalic /w/ in Judeo-Spanish 51
- Word Order and Minimalism 69
- The Status of Old French Clitics in the 12th Century 89
- Towards a Unified Account of Positive and Negative Polarity: Evidence from Romanian 105
- Correlativization and Degree Quantification in Spanish 121
- Imperfect Variation and Class Marking in the Old Spanish Third Conjugation 143
- Licensing Negative Fragments and the Interpretation of Comparison 157
- Developing I-Language in L1 and L2 173
- Crypto-Variation in Italian Velar Palatalisation 193
- Antisymmetry and the Typology of Relative Clauses: Morphological Evidence from Romance 209
- Romance Paths as Cognate Complements: A Lexical-Syntactic Account 227
- Discriminating Pitch Accent Alignment in Spanish 243
- Proscriptions…Gaps…and Something in Between: An Experimental Examination of Spanish Phonotactics 261
- Romanian Palatalization: The Role of Place of Articulation in Perception 277
- Putting in Order the Spanish DP 291
- The Domain of Palatalization in Romanian 307
- Rhotic Metathesis Asymmetries in Romance: Formalizing the Effects of Articulation and Perception on Sound Change 321
- The Left Edge in the Spanish Clausal Structure 339
- Index 359
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword vii
- Null Expletives and Case: The View from Romance 1
- On the Existence of Null Complementizers in Old French 19
- On the Lack of Transparency Effects in French 37
- On the Syllabification of Prevocalic /w/ in Judeo-Spanish 51
- Word Order and Minimalism 69
- The Status of Old French Clitics in the 12th Century 89
- Towards a Unified Account of Positive and Negative Polarity: Evidence from Romanian 105
- Correlativization and Degree Quantification in Spanish 121
- Imperfect Variation and Class Marking in the Old Spanish Third Conjugation 143
- Licensing Negative Fragments and the Interpretation of Comparison 157
- Developing I-Language in L1 and L2 173
- Crypto-Variation in Italian Velar Palatalisation 193
- Antisymmetry and the Typology of Relative Clauses: Morphological Evidence from Romance 209
- Romance Paths as Cognate Complements: A Lexical-Syntactic Account 227
- Discriminating Pitch Accent Alignment in Spanish 243
- Proscriptions…Gaps…and Something in Between: An Experimental Examination of Spanish Phonotactics 261
- Romanian Palatalization: The Role of Place of Articulation in Perception 277
- Putting in Order the Spanish DP 291
- The Domain of Palatalization in Romanian 307
- Rhotic Metathesis Asymmetries in Romance: Formalizing the Effects of Articulation and Perception on Sound Change 321
- The Left Edge in the Spanish Clausal Structure 339
- Index 359
