Mid front vowel lowering before rhotics in Ibero-Romance
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Travis G. Bradley
Abstract
This paper surveys the distribution of mid front vowels before rhotics in five different varieties of Ibero-Romance and identifies typological patterns of vowel lowering. An analysis is proposed in Optimality Theory that employs a fixed ranking of phonetically grounded markedness constraints against closed mid front /e/ in different pre-rhotic contexts, organized in an implicational hierarchy. Faithfulness constraints on vowel place features interact with this ranking to generate a factorial typology of /e/-lowering that matches the distribution observed in the data and makes predictions about possible and impossible languages. The paper also discusses theoretical implications for the status of intervocalic trills in Ibero-Romance as singleton versus geminate segments.
Abstract
This paper surveys the distribution of mid front vowels before rhotics in five different varieties of Ibero-Romance and identifies typological patterns of vowel lowering. An analysis is proposed in Optimality Theory that employs a fixed ranking of phonetically grounded markedness constraints against closed mid front /e/ in different pre-rhotic contexts, organized in an implicational hierarchy. Faithfulness constraints on vowel place features interact with this ranking to generate a factorial typology of /e/-lowering that matches the distribution observed in the data and makes predictions about possible and impossible languages. The paper also discusses theoretical implications for the status of intervocalic trills in Ibero-Romance as singleton versus geminate segments.
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Foreword and acknowledgements ix
- Editor’s introduction xi
- Theory and practice in Romance linguistics today 1
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Part I. Morphophonology
- On the origins of /ɨ/ in Romanian 17
- An acoustic investigation of nasal place neutralization in Spanish 33
- An acoustic study of rhotics in onset clusters in La Rioja 49
- Mid front vowel lowering before rhotics in Ibero-Romance 63
- Plural formation in Galician 79
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Part II. Syntax
- On bare subject relative clauses in Old French 101
- Directed motion in Medieval French 117
- An ergative analysis of French valency alternations 137
- Peninsular Spanish pre-nominal possessives in ellipsis contexts 155
- On the nature of nominal features 177
- On the nature of bare nouns in Afro-Bolivian Spanish 191
- Negative imperatives in Portuguese and other Romance languages 205
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Part III. Semantic interfaces
- Another look at Italian generic sentences 223
- The agreement of collective DPS in Romanian 239
- A multidominance account for conjoined questions in Romanian 257
- The Romanian verbal cluster and the theory of head movement 271
- New challenges in the area of semantic dependencies 287
- Polarity particles in English and Romanian 303
- Index 329
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents vii
- Foreword and acknowledgements ix
- Editor’s introduction xi
- Theory and practice in Romance linguistics today 1
-
Part I. Morphophonology
- On the origins of /ɨ/ in Romanian 17
- An acoustic investigation of nasal place neutralization in Spanish 33
- An acoustic study of rhotics in onset clusters in La Rioja 49
- Mid front vowel lowering before rhotics in Ibero-Romance 63
- Plural formation in Galician 79
-
Part II. Syntax
- On bare subject relative clauses in Old French 101
- Directed motion in Medieval French 117
- An ergative analysis of French valency alternations 137
- Peninsular Spanish pre-nominal possessives in ellipsis contexts 155
- On the nature of nominal features 177
- On the nature of bare nouns in Afro-Bolivian Spanish 191
- Negative imperatives in Portuguese and other Romance languages 205
-
Part III. Semantic interfaces
- Another look at Italian generic sentences 223
- The agreement of collective DPS in Romanian 239
- A multidominance account for conjoined questions in Romanian 257
- The Romanian verbal cluster and the theory of head movement 271
- New challenges in the area of semantic dependencies 287
- Polarity particles in English and Romanian 303
- Index 329
