Vowel length from Latin to Romance

327 Pages·2015·7.197 MB·English

by  Loporcaro, Michele

OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,9/7/2015,SPi
Vowel Length from Latin to Romance
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,9/7/2015,SPi
OXFORD STUDIES IN DIACHRONIC AND HISTORICAL LINGUISTICS
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AdamLedgewayandIanRoberts,UniversityofCambridge
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recently published in the series
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TheHistoryofNegationintheLanguagesofEuropeandtheMediterranean
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EditedbyDavidWillis,ChristopherLucas,andAnneBreitbarth
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ConstructionalizationandConstructionalChanges
ElizabethTraugottandGraemeTrousdale
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WordOrderinOldItalian
CeciliaPoletto
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DiachronyandDialects
GrammaticalChangeintheDialectsofItaly
EditedbyPaolaBenincà,AdamLedgeway,andNigelVincent
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DiscourseandPragmaticMarkersfromLatintotheRomanceLanguages
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VowelLengthfromLatintoRomance
MicheleLoporcaro
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,9/7/2015,SPi
Vowel Length from Latin
to Romance
MICHELE LOPORCARO
1
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,9/7/2015,SPi
3
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OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,9/7/2015,SPi
For Giovanna and Laura: they know why
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,9/7/2015,SPi
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,9/7/2015,SPi
Contents
Preface ix
Listoffigures xiii
Listofabbreviationsandnotationalconventions xiv
Latinauthorsandworkscitedinabbreviation xvii
1 Introduction 1
1.1 Thestartingpoint:vowellengthinClassicalLatin 1
1.2 Thelong-termtrend:LatinharbingersofthelossofCVL 9
1.3 Structureoftheargumentandaimsofthebook 12
2 VowellengthintheLatin–Romancetransition 18
2.1 ChangeinLatinVL:metalinguistictestimoniesandtheriseofOSL 20
2.2 WhyOSLmustbeProto-Romance:excludingconceivablealternatives 25
2.2.1 OSLatalaterdate,andonlyinsomeRomancelanguages 25
2.2.2 OSLinRepublicanLatin? 30
2.3 TheriseofOSLandtheregionaldiversificationofLatin 40
2.3.1 Evidencefrommetricalinscriptions,part1:Herman(1982) 41
2.3.2 Evidencefrommetricalinscriptions,part2:Adams(1999) 46
2.3.3 LatinandRomanceinAfrica 47
2.4 Qualityisnotquantity,afterall 51
2.5 Intermediatesummaryandprovisionalconclusion 57
3 ThedevelopmentofVLinRomance 61
3.1 ThreetypesofdistributionofVLintheRomancelanguages 61
3.2 IndefenceofOpenSyllableLengtheninginmodernStandardItalian 65
3.3 TheeasternandwesternperipheriesofRomance 75
3.4 NorthernRomance 80
3.4.1 NorthernItalo-Romance 82
3.4.2 Gallo-Romance 101
3.4.3 (Therestof)Rhaeto-Romance 108
3.5 Summingup:VLandOSLfromProto-Romancetothe
modernlanguages 115
4 TheanalysisofNorthernRomancevowellength 121
4.1 CompetinganalysesoftheriseofCVLinNorthernItalo-Romance 121
4.1.1 FormalaccountsoftheriseofVLinMilanese 124
4.1.2 CompetingexplanationsoftheriseandstatusofVLinFriulian 129
4.1.3 AlternativeformalaccountsfortheriseofVLinCremonese 132
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viii Contents
4.2 Diachronicphonology,generativegrammar,andmethodin
historicallinguistics 133
4.3 Toomuchsynchronyintodiachrony,toomuchdiachrony
intosynchrony 138
5 Dialectvariationandcomparativereconstruction 145
5.1 Atthevanguardofchange:thefadingofcontrastiveVLin
NorthernItalo-Romance 147
5.1.1 LossofCVLinperipheralFriuliandialects 148
5.1.2 ThearealpatternofCVLinLiguriaandPiedmont 149
5.1.3 ThefadingofCVLinAlpineandEasternLombard 152
5.1.4 ThepositionofVenetan 163
5.2 ApocopeandtheriseofcontrastiveVLinNorthernRomance 164
5.2.1 Onthenon-co-occurrenceofCVLandapocope 165
5.2.2 ThegradualspreadofapocopeinNorthernItalo-Romance 168
5.3 Therearguardofchange:atthesourceofVLinNorthernRomance 172
5.3.1 GeminateconsonantsandVLinAlpineLombard 174
5.3.2 OnthesouthernperipheryofNorthernRomance 184
5.3.3 Phoneticgradienceinvowelandconsonantlengthandthe
changefromPRomgeminationtoNRomCVL 190
5.3.4 AcloserlookatWesternRomancedegemination 194
5.3.5 Theoddoneout:CVLwithoutdegeminationsouth
oftheApennines? 200
5.4 Makingsenseofthecomparativepicture 203
5.4.1 Aphoneticconstraintonvowellength:rhythmicalcompensation 208
5.4.2 RomanceoxytonesandVL 214
5.5 Takingstockofthereconstructiveevidence 223
6 Inlieuofaconclusion 227
Appendix:Languageanddialectmaps 241
References 250
Indexoflanguages 287
Indexofnames 293
Indexofsubjects 300
OUPCORRECTEDPROOF–FINAL,9/7/2015,SPi
Preface
This book provides a global reappraisal of a central topic of Romance historical
linguistics: the development of vowel length from Latin to the Romance languages
and dialects. Vowel length was contrastive in Latin, and no daughter language has
inherited that contrast, though several have established novel vowel length distinc-
tionsatdifferentstagesoftheirhistoryandindifferentways,whichwillbeaddressed
in what follows. While all those developments deserve attention per se, the main
questionthepresentmonographfocusesoniswhetheradiachroniclink,viaaseries
of subsequent changes, can be established between at least some of the length
contrastsdocumentedthroughoutRomance,todayorinthepast,andLatindistinct-
ivevowelquantity.
Theanswerwillbepositive:itwillbearguedthatthemostsatisfactoryreconstruc-
tionoftheriseofcontrastivevowellengthinasubstantialnumberoftheRomance
systems displaying that property (nowadays or in the past), scattered over the
central-northern part of the Romance-speaking territory from the Apennines to
theNorthSea,isoneinwhichthisdevelopmentisanalysedasadiachronicsuccessor
ofaProto-Romanceopensyllablelengtheningprocess,whoserisecanbeinturnheld
responsible for the loss of the contrastive vowel length that used to characterize
ClassicalLatin.
Thetopicisamuch-debatedandhighlycontroversialone,inallitsfacets:tocite
just one aspect, the demise of Latin contrastive vowel quantity has been explained
variously, and dated in a widely diverging way, ranging from the 3rd century bc to
the4thad.Thetopicalsohaswideempiricalimplications,sincediscussionofvowel
quantity entails addressing the relationship with (the historical development of)
stress assignment and syllable structure, consonant gemination (word-internal as
well as at word boundary, through raddoppiamento fonosintattico) and degemina-
tion, as well as with apocope, diphthongization, etc. This list includes some of the
major isoglosses distinguishing subgroups within the Romance language family:
thus,dealingwiththistopicboilsdowntocomingclosetoprovidingacomprehen-
sive account of the diachronic development of Latin–Romance phonology, at the
prosody-to-segments interface. The implications for theoretical linguistics (in par-
ticular, for the theory of sound change) are also significant: discussion of the most
effective explanation of the empirical phenomena at hand will require addressing
the division of labour between synchronic and diachronic linguistics, in terms of
methods and explanatory scope, as well as, even more broadly, the issue of the
interplaybetweenformandsubstanceinlinguisticsoundsystems,orthephonetics/
phonologyinterplay.Anumberofmorespecificissuescouldbementionedhere:for