Vocalic adjustments under Positional Markedness in Catalan and other Romance languages

While in a wide range of phonological theories preservation under prominence is a well noticed effect, there are few explanations for the accumulation of prominent properties in a particular position. Both tendencies, however, as well as their interaction, are particularly suited to formal expression within Optimality Theory. The aim of this paper is to show that the word-initial position is a site of vowel preservation (Positional Faithfulness) and a point of attraction of salient features (Positional Markedness). The focus is on the less familiar effect of get-together prominent elements in order to shed new light on several vocalic adjustments that have been unsatisfactorily explained in the traditional literature of Romance languages. Key Words: Vowel change; epenthesis; prominence; Positional Faithfulness; Positional Markedness; Optimality Theory; Catalan; Romance languages.

[1]  P. Prieto,et al.  Exceptional hiatuses in Spanish , 2007 .

[2]  Ramón Menéndez Pidal,et al.  Manual de gramática histórica española , 1999 .

[3]  Joaquim Viaplana.  La flexió verbal regular del valencià , 1984 .

[4]  John J. Ohala,et al.  Alternatives to the sonority hierarchy for explaining segmental sequential constraints , 1997 .

[5]  L. Goldstein,et al.  Gestural overlap and recoverability: articulatory evidence from Georgian , 2001 .

[6]  P. Smolensky,et al.  Optimality Theory: Constraint Interaction in Generative Grammar , 2004 .

[7]  K. Crosswhite,et al.  Vowel Reduction in Optimality Theory , 2001 .

[8]  Max W Wheeler,et al.  The Phonology of Catalan , 1979 .

[9]  X. Ramón Freixeiro Mato.  Gramática da lingua galega , 1998 .

[10]  E. Bonet,et al.  More on Alignment as an Alternative to Domains: The Syllabification of Catalan Clitics , 2005 .

[11]  John Alderete.  Faithfulness to Prosodic Heads , 2001 .

[12]  Antonio M. Badía Margarit.  Predominio de las vocales abiertas ę y ǫ en el catalán de Barcelona , 1966 .

[13]  Teresa Cabré.  Vowel reduction and vowel harmony in Eastern Catalan loanword phonology , 2009 .

[14]  F. Moll,et al.  Gramàtica històrica catalana , 1991 .

[15]  M. Kenstowicz.  Vocale Incerta, Vocale Aperta , 2010 .

[17]  Patricia J. Donegan.  On the natural phonology of vowels , 1978 .

[18]  Psycholinguistic factors in morphological asymmetry , 1988 .

[19]  Sieb G. Nooteboom,et al.  Lexical retrieval from fragments of spoken words: beginnings vs endings , 1981 .

[20]  Joan Mascaró.  La distribució de les vocals mitjanes tòniques en el català central , 2008 .