1. SPANISH 'DEPALATALIZATION': THE SYNCHRONIC, DIACHRONIC AND PERCEPTION PERSPECTIVES.
- Author
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Bessett, Ryan M. and Colina, Sonia
- Subjects
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LOANWORDS , *OPTIMALITY theory (Linguistics) , *PHONOLOGY , *COMPARATIVE grammar , *GENERATIVE grammar , *CORONALS (Phonetics) , *NASALITY (Phonetics) - Abstract
Spanish has a restriction on palatal nasals and laterals in the coda so that they are normally realized as dental or alveolar coronals. In the onset position, the palatal point of articulation is retained, bello (be.[ʎ]o) 'beautiful-masc.', beldad (be[l].dad) 'beauty'; doña (do.[ʎ]a) 'Madam', don (do[n]) 'Mister'. Alternations such as these led phonologists to propose a rule of depalatalization that turns an underlying palatal nasal or lateral into a coronal (Contreras 1977; Harris 1983). More recently, within an optimality-theoretic framework and on the basis of loan word evidence, Lloret and Mascaró (2006) argue again in favor of an active process of depalatalization in the phonology of Modern Spanish. Taking the proposal of Lloret and Mascaró as its point of departure, this paper expands the discussion on depalatalization to consider diachronic data, the role of the underlying representation and the perception grammar, in particular regarding loanword phonology. Historical data support depalatalization as an active phenomenon in Old Spanish and Medieval Spanish; yet the morphophonological alternations cannot be considered active/productive synchronically. Unlike previous serial models of phonology, an OT framework allows for the incorporation of diachronic data into the analysis, through constraints, constraint re-ranking and Lexicon Optimization, thus explaining how the current situation came about and shedding light on apparent synchronic alternations. OT also provides a formalization of the role of the underlying representation in diachronic change and in synchronic loanword evidence, in connection with the perception grammar, thus providing support for depalatalization as an active phonotactic restriction in Spanish. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2017
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