Summary Details
| Query: |
Fortition of Palatal Glide in Romance
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| Author: | Steven Schaufele | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
General Linguistics
Historical Linguistics History of Linguistics |
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| Summary: |
Dear Colleagues: A couple of weeks ago, i posted a query about the history of the evolution from a syllable-initial palatal glide in Latin to a palatal (or alveo-palatal) fricative or affricate in such modern Romance languages as French or Italian. I must first acknowledge the following people who provided some portion of the answers i am hereby summarizing: Jakob Dempsey <jakob@saturn.yzu.edu.tw> Lance Eccles <lance.eccles@mq.edu.au> Antony `Tonio' Green <green@ling.uni-potsdam.de> William Morris <wmorris@cs.ucsd.edu> Marc Picard <picard@vax2.concordia.ca> Remy Viredaz <remy.viredaz@bluewin.ch> I should perhaps have clarified that i was not asking merely about the *fact* of syllable-initial fortition. Obviously, what is involved here can be described as such, and i am quite aware that such things occur. What i was curious about was what is known about the precise details of this particular instance of fortition as it occurred in the historical development of the Romance languages. One reference source was mentioned to me: Heinrich Lausberg's _Romanische Sprachwissenschaft; II. Konsonantismus_ (1967, pp. 16-18). I was not surprised to learn that, to the extent the historical details are known, the process leading from Classical [j] to e.g. Modern French [Z] took place in many stages, and many of these stages survive in various parts of Romania. I hope that, in the process of preparing the following summary, i haven't oversimplified the facts *too* atrociously! The concensus among Romanists seems to be that the initial fortition produced a voiced (alveo-) palatal stop, somewhat like the Hungarian `gy'. One of my informants, if i understood hann correctly, said that this pronunciation can still be found in some Rheato-Romance dialects (of course, Classical unpalatalized [k] is still attested in modern Sardinian). As is not unusual, the palatal stop became a palatal affricate in much of Romania, and remains so in Standard Italian to this day. This is the stage that French was at at the time of the Norman Conquest, which is why many French loans (e.g., `judge') are pronounced with an affricate in English while being pronounced with a pure fricative in modern French. The mutation from an affricate to a fricative is attested, apparently, not only in French but in Portuguese and Rumanian. Where things get really interesting, apparently, is in Spanish. Supposedly, the palatal fricative that is found in French, Portuguese, etc. evolved into a *voiceless* velar fricative [x] in Spanish. However, in many Spanish-speaking areas, including much of South America, the reflex of Latin `j' is nowadays pronounced [j], more or less the way it was in the Classical period. My informants conveyed some uncertainty as to whether this constitutes a *survival* from Classical times or a subsequent development coming full-circle. At least two of my informants mentioned that in at least some Argentinian dialects the French alveo-palatal fricative is maintained. And in some Mexican and Puerto Rican dialects, [j] and [dZ] are allophones of each other, meaning among other things that native speakers of these dialects have difficulty mastering the distinction made in English between these two segments. Best, Steven Steven Schaufele, Ph.D. Asst. Prof. Linguistics, English Dept. Soochow Univeristy, Taipei, Taiwan (886)(02)2881-9471 ext. 6504 (O) (886)(02)2835-6966 (H) fcosw5@mail.scu.edu.tw |
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| LL Issue: | 13.463 | |
| Date Posted: | 19-Feb-2002 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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