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Intensity differences were used to measure the degree of lenition of the voiced approximants in various contexts in order to contrast them with their stop variants [b, d, g], and in order to investigate the contexts in which they are traditionally thought to appear. 3,011 instances were taken from telephone conversations of eight native Spanish speakers from seven countries. The influence of phonetic context (post-pausal, post-nasal, post-lateral, etc.), stress, word frequency, appearance in a suffix (e.g., -ado, -aba ) was determined using multiple regression. In line with traditional analyses, the results show that the voiced approximants are most lenited intervocalically and least lenited after a pause. However, post-nasal and post-lateral instances fall between these extremes. In addition, /β/, , and /γ/ are also more stop-like when following [s] or [h]. Traditional analyses do not factor in the influence of stress, word frequency, word boundaries, or appearance in a suffix, yet these emerge as significant predictors. Although the distribution of the variants of these three approximants is generally thought to be due to a unitary rule, significant differences between the three suggest otherwise. When followed by a stressed syllable, /β/ and exhibit more constriction when compared to /γ/, while all three phones are less lenited when they fall between two stressed syllables. /β/ and are also more constricted when they appear intervocalically in word-initial position when compared to word-internal intervocalic tokens, while the same is not true for /γ/. Contra traditional descriptions, is no less lenited than /β/ or /γ/ following a lateral. Instances of are also more lenited when they appear in high frequency words and less lenited in low frequency words. On the other hand, frequency is not a factor for /β/ and /γ/.

On the base of the data in Camilli (Archivum Romanicum 13: 220–251, 1929), this paper gives a complete descriptive analysis of the complex system of stress-dependent harmonies of the dialect of Servigliano (Marche, Italy). Harmonic effects that affect the posttonic, tonic, pretonic and proclitic domains are derived from a limited number of constraints. Two constraints favor autosegmental spreading in different domains and two constraints impose right-to-left directionality through positional faithfulness in two prominent positions: stressed syllables and inflectional suffixes. Changes in stressed and pretonic position are limited to gradual raising by local conjunction of two faithfulness constraints. The paper also examines cases of morphologized metaphony, low vowel opacity, the influence of proclitic secondary stress, and discusses previous analyses.

Spanish reflexive forms in prepositional phrases often occur with the adjective mismo ‘self’ (e.g., para sí vs. para sí mismo ‘for himself’). This co-occurrence is at times optional, i.e., mismo functions as a reflexive intensifier as found in many other languages (König and Gast, Linguistic Typology 10: 223–276, 2006), and at times puzzlingly obligatory. This makes the collocations a complex phenomenon that has not yet been properly addressed in a comprehensive way. In this paper, I claim that the structures instantiate two independent pronominal constructions, which following the typology of reflexives in Haiman (Language 39: 781–819, 1983), I call the “light reflexive” [ prep sí] and the “heavy reflexive” [ prep sí mismo]. Basing my analysis on a study of 3,000 natural examples from the CREA (Corpus de referencia del español actual ‘Reference corpus of current Spanish’), I show that the two structures at times compete within the same grammatical frame, but most of the times, they mutually exclude each other: the light reflexive occurs mostly in frames bearing middle voice semantics, while the heavy reflexive serves as the most natural exponence of typical reflexive situations.

The main purpose of this paper is to show that Syllable Contact is responsible for the application of an extensive set of processes drawn from Romance languages and to explore the nature and effects of this constraint within Optimality Theory (OT) on the basis of the analysis of these phenomena. All the processes under examination entail a change in manner of articulation and are the following: a) regressive manner assimilation in some varieties of Catalan and in Languedocian Occitan, b) alveolar fricative rhotacism in Majorcan Catalan, dialects of Sardinian and dialects of Galician and c) alveolar fricative gliding in Languedocian Occitan. The analysis of these processes leads to two important theoretical implications. First, it provides strong empirical evidence that SYLLABLE CONTACT cannot be regarded as a single constraint which categorically bans coda-onset clusters with rising sonority, but rather should be broken down into a universal hierarchy of constraints targeting all possible sonority distances between adjacent heterosyllabic segments, as originally suggested by Murray and Vennemann (Language 59: 514–528, 1983) and implemented within OT in Bat-El (Phonology 13: 283–328, 1996), Gouskova (Falling sonority onsets, loanwords, and Syllable Contact, CLS, 2001, Exceptions to sonority distance generalizations, CLS, 2002, Phonology 21: 201–250, 2004), Baertsch (An optimality theoretic approach to syllable structure: The split margin hierarchy, Indiana University dissertation, 2002) and Baertsch and Davis (Zas Papers in Linguistics 32: 1–14, 2003, Syllable contact: relational hierarchy or locally conjoined margin constraints?, 2005, On the relationship between codas and onset clusters, 2007) (see Pons, Els contactes consonàntics en balear. Descripció i anàlisi, Universitat de Barcelona dissertation, 2004a, It is all downhill from here: the role of Syllable Contact in Romance languages, Manchester University, 2005a). Second, it sheds new light on the ordering within the sonority scale of certain classes of sounds, namely liquids and obstruents, whose positions have traditionally been controversial.