Palatal Sound Change in the Romance Languages

Abstract

This monograph presents a thorough investigation of the main historical and present-day variation and change patterns undergone by palatal sounds in the Romance languages. By relying on phonetic and phonological information to motivate a formal account of palatal sound change, the analyses proposed in this book offer a principled, constraint-based explanation for the evolution of palatals in the Romance-speaking world. It provides a robust and up-to-date literature review on the subject, taking into consideration not only the viewpoints and data from diachronic research, but also the results from various phonetic, phonological, dialectal, and comprehensive studies. By taking into account the role of phonetic information in the shaping of phonological patterns, this book approaches sound change from its inception during the speaker-listener interaction and formalizes it as the difference in constraint ranking between the grammar of the speaker and that of the listener-turned-speaker. This perspective is intended to model how and why similar change events may take place in different varieties and/or the same language across periods of time.

An acoustical analysis of the merger of /ɲ/ and /nj/ in Buenos Aires Spanish

“…Palatal consonants in Spanish have garnered the attention of much theoretical and experimental work (e.g. Recasens 1990, 2013; Harris & Kaisse 1999; Guitart 2003; Baker 2004; Zampaulo 2013). At the palatal place of articulation, traditional Spanish phonological descriptions include four phonemes: an obstruent (/ʝ/), a lateral (/ʎ/), an affricate (/t͡ʃ/), and a nasal (/ɲ/), which arose through different co-articulatory processes such as fronting, tongue-body raising and assimilation.…”

“…The present study explores the production of the (alveolo)palatal nasal, /ɲ/, and the nasal-plus-glide sequence, /nj/, 1 in Buenos Aires Spanish (BAS). Palatal consonants have had a prominent place in the Hispanic Linguistics literature due to their historical development, their distribution in the phonological system of Spanish and their effect on stress placement (Harris 1983, Lloyd 1987, Lipski 1989, Harris & Kaisse 1999, Penny 2002, Guitart 2003, Baker 2004, Zampaulo 2013). The patterns of variation of Spanish palatal consonants have also attracted much research.…”

Diversity of iron cave-dwelling mygalomorph spiders from Pará, Brazil, with description of three new species (Araneae)

“…Females are distinguished from congeners by the aspect of the spermathecae, composed of two receptacula far from each other, with a rounded termini and a conspicuous constriction below the termini (Figure 38). Yamamoto and Brescovit (2011) reported four species of Idiops from Amazonian region, all sharing the straight embolus in lateral view, leg I with several spines and metatarsi I with a slight curvature at its midlength. One of these species is considered herein as new (I. carajas) and the material examined by Yamamoto and Brescovit (2011) is included here, in additional material examined section.…”