Syllable structure has helped shape the Germanic languages and, remarkably, the syllable template inherited from Germanic has remained relatively stable over nearly 2,000 years since our first written Germanic records. Onsets permit anywhere from zero to three consonants with only /ŋ/ barred from forming a word-initial simple onset. As for complex onsets, English has simplified many inherited clusters, for example, /kn/➔[n], while Yiddish has developed a wider range of possible clusters. What they have in common is that two-consonant clusters are formed from obstruents+sonorants, conforming to the Sonority Sequencing Generalization (SSG) stipulating that sonority should fall from the nucleus toward the syllable edges. This generalization, however, is violated by three-consonant clusters, namely sequences of a sibilant plus two consonants, usually an obstruent+liquid.
The monophthongs and diphthongs filling the nucleus (as well as syllabic sonorants in some varieties) have a symbiotic relationship with the following coda mediated via the rhyme. Because stressed syllables are preferably bimoraic as per Prokosch’s Law, vowels are long in open syllables or when followed by at most one consonant. However, before two consonants (including orthographically), vowels are typically short. This plays out in unique ways in various languages. In some Scandinavian languages, consonants are lengthened after short vowels, thereby building contrasts via not only vowel length, but also consonant length, for example, Icelandic [ma:n] ‘young lady, acc.’ versus [man:] ‘man, acc.’ Thus, some scholars have argued that vowel length is allophonic in these Scandinavian languages, but phonemic in languages like German and English, for example, bit [bɪt] versus beat [bijt]. As for coda consonants, the SSG typically applies, creating a large number of clusters that are generally mirror images of permissible onsets. Many coda clusters have the shape sonorant+obstruent or liquid+nasal. These latter clusters may be broken up, for example, Afrikaans fil(ə)m ‘film’, or simplified in some languages, for example, Norwegian nd clusters➔n. Word finally, clusters tend to be more complex both in the coda, as well as due to the coronal appendix consonants added to the end of the coda. These appendices more often than not coincide with morphological complexity, for example, German Gast+s ‘guest, gen.sg.’, though not always, for example, Dutch herf-st ‘autumn’.
Indeed, rules for syllabification highlight the differences between word-initial and medial onsets because maximizing the onset also does not hold across some morphemic boundaries, for example, Lie.be ‘love’ but lieb.lich ‘lovely’. Furthermore, while languages like Dutch tend to maximize onsets like German and English, they also balance that with the need for stressed syllables to be minimally bimoraic leading to the syllabification as-ter, for instance, rather than *a-ster with the onset maximized. And, lastly, following the Contact Law, syllable contacts are more preferred when there is a strong onset following a weak coda. This preference can account for differential syllable divisions, for example, p.l in Icelandic but .pl in Faroese, as well as ultimately changes in onsets such as West Germanic gemination and glide strengthening. What makes each language unique is how they have individually adapted the syllable template through time. It is these differences that provide a more complete perspective of Germanic syllable structure and form the basis for the current discussion.
Article
Syllable Structure in Germanic
Laura Catharine Smith
Article
Morphologization and the Boundary Between Morphology and Phonology in the Romance Languages
Paul O'Neill
This article analyses, from a Romance perspective, the concept of morphologization and seeks to answer the following question: At what point does a historically proven phonological cause-and-effect relationship, whereby phonological feature X causes and determines phonological feature Y, cease to hold and the dephonologized Y element stand as a marker of some morphological distinction? The question is relevant to cases in which the original phonological conditioning element is still present and where it has disappeared. I explain that the answer to this question depends entirely on one’s conception of morphology and phonology. I argue against theories that adhere to the principle of lexical minimization and have a static conception of morphology, which is restricted to the concatenation of idiosyncratic morphemes. These theories are forced by their theoretical underpinnings, which are often ideological and not supported by robust empirical evidence, to explain morphologized phenomena as being synchronically derived by phonology. This approach comes at a huge cost: the model of phonology is endowed with powerful tools to make the analysis fit the theory and which ultimately diminishes the empirical content and plausibility of the phonological hypotheses; such approaches also constitute serious problems for language acquisition and learning. I argue for more dynamic and abstractive models of morphology, which do not impose strict restrictions on lexical storage. I ultimately view morphologization as an instance of morphologically conditioned phonology and uphold that there is no strict boundary between the phonology and morphology but both systems overlap and interact.
I analyze data and phonological explanations of metaphony in nouns and verbs in Italo-Romance, plural formation in Spanish and Portuguese, the distribution of velar allomorphy in the Italian and Spanish verbs, and the distribution of verbal stress in Surmiran Romansh and Spanish. With reference to the latter, the contribution dedicates significant space exploring the extent to which the diphthong/monophthong alternation in Spanish, and different types of allomorphy in Surmiran Romansh, is a matter of phonologically conditioned allomorphy or morphologically conditioned phonology.
Article
Dislocation in the Romance Languages: Syntax, Semantics, Discourse, Acquisition
Davide Garassino
Dislocations are syntactic constructions consisting of a core sentence and a detached constituent located outside the clause, either at its left (left dislocation) or at its right (right dislocation). Typically, although not invariably, the clause hosts a resumptive element, often a pronoun, which is co-referent with the detached constituent. This separation between an extra-clausal element and the sentence led to the classification of dislocations as “non-canonical” or “marked” syntactic structures.
Dislocations are attested in many language families, to the extent that they can be regarded as a language universal. However, these constructions have predominantly been examined in Germanic and Romance languages, both in formal and functional frameworks.
Left and right dislocations are usually analyzed as topic-marking structures, in which the referent of the detached element has the function of sentence topic. However, specific types of topics appear to preferentially occur in either left or right dislocation. For example, left dislocations often convey topic shifts and contrastive topics, while continuous (or familiar) topics are more commonly found in right dislocations. Nonetheless, corpus-based research unveiled a more nuanced situation. Furthermore, interactionally oriented studies also suggest that exploring dislocations in spontaneous conversations is crucial for comprehending their broad functional spectrum.
Thus, dislocations present many intriguing challenges to Romance linguistics, including the questions, To what extent do left and right dislocations differ syntactically and pragmatically across Romance languages? Are descriptions framed in terms of “topic establishing” and “topic promotion” truly adequate? What are the main prosodic characteristics of left and right dislocations? and What challenges do L1 and L2 learners encounter in the acquisition of these constructions?
Article
Gothic and Other East Germanic Varieties
Stefan Schaffner
Biblical Gothic is the earliest Germanic language preserved in a longer text. The main source is represented by the Bible translation of the Visigothic Arian Christian bishop Wulfila ( born ca. 311, deceased ca. 382–383). Another few short Gothic texts are extant. For the translation of the Bible (ca. 350–380), on the basis of a Greek text, Wulfila invented his own alphabet (called Wulfila’s alphabet), using the Greek alphabet as model, with the addition of Latin and runic characters. Several manuscripts (5th/6th century; the most famous is the Uppsala Codex argenteus) contain the greater part of the New Testament. In spite of its fragmentary documentation, Gothic represents without doubt an important basis for the reconstruction of Proto-Germanic, because it offers—due to its early attestation—very archaic features in all areas of its grammar in comparison with the other old Germanic languages, the documentation of which began some centuries later. Gothic also shows recent innovations (especially the almost complete elimination of the effects of Verner’s Law within the strong verbs). The position of Gothic within the other Germanic subgroups, North and West Germanic, is still a matter of controversial discussion. Whereas older research stressed the correspondences between Gothic and North Germanic and, therefore, favored a closer relationship between them, postulating a subgroup Goto-Nordic, currently, a subgrouping into Northwest Germanic on the one hand and East Germanic (with Gothic as the most important representative) one the other hand is preferred, although this model also leaves open a couple of questions, giving impetus to further research. Other varieties of East Germanic are runic epigraphic texts (less than 10, most of them probably Gothic) from the 1st half of the 3rd century until the end of the 6th century. One of them (on the Charnay fibula, 2nd half of the 6th century) is probably of Burgundian origin. The documentation of other EGrm (East Germanic). languages is very poor and consists almost only of a few names. Two short syntagmata can probably be attributed to Vandalic. Crimean Gothic, the latest attested EGrm. language, is documented in a list of several dozen words and three lines of a cantilena. Most attested forms seem to represent a late EGrm. dialect.
Article
Intonation in the Romance Languages
Barbara Gili Fivela
The article discusses the main intonation features of Catalan, French, Italian, Occitan, Portuguese, Raeto-Romance, Romanian, Sardinian, and Spanish, even though they have been investigated to different extents for their intonation traits. Differing amount of research has been carried out on each individual language, this research has often been performed with different methods and with reference to different frameworks, and, finally, investigations have considered language dialects and varieties in a variety of ways.
Nevertheless, scientific literature on intonation in Romance languages, especially that which refers to the autosegmental–metrical framework, has highlighted similarities and differences regarding prominence, phrasing, and the relationship between intonation patterns and pragmatic meaning. Pitch prominence is attested in all languages and varieties, whether it is related to lexical stressed positions or accentual phrases (APs), and the nuclear prominence does not need to be implemented on the rightmost element; consistently, Romance languages usually show pitch-range compression rather than de-accenting in statements. As for phrasing, most languages and varieties feature at least two levels above the word (the intonational phrase [IP] and the intermediate phrase [ip]), while some languages and varieties also feature a third level in the prosodic hierarchy (the AP), and one variety has one level only (the IP). Regarding pitch patterns, languages and varieties show a highly variable number of nuclear contours and internal variation; these, however, largely depend on the sentence type; this is because variation tends to be greater in questions than in broad-focus statements, where the usual pattern a falling one Romance languages.
The article’s final remarks focus on open issues, such as the debates on pitch-accent density and the prosodic levels, with a specific reference to the ip constituent and to constituents larger than the IP. Additionally, it addresses the need for larger comparable corpora, collected by means of the same methods and transcribed with reference to the same framework, as well as for a wider perspective which also takes into account the integration of context and multimodal information, in order to deepen the current body of knowledge on intonation in the Romance languages.
Article
Phonological Variation and Change in Catalan
Josefina Carrera-Sabaté
The article gives an overview of the origin and vitality of several ongoing processes of change in Catalan. In the area of consonants, it presents (a) the existing alternation between [ʎ] and [j] or [ʝ] (and [ʒ]) in Eastern Catalan and (b) the variation between post-alveolo-palatal fricatives and affricates in different positions in word-initial, post-consonantal, intervocalic, and word-final position, also taking into account Eastern and Western Catalan dialects. In the area of vowels, the article presents the variation that exists within the stressed and unstressed vowel systems in Catalan: (a) The stressed vowel systems have different mid vowels among the Catalan dialects, and these vowels present important differences in openness; (b) the unstressed vowel systems of Catalan split vowel variation within Catalan dialects into two main groups (Eastern and Western) taking into account the scope of vowel reduction and, in particular, the phonological mechanisms of these groups. The article also contains a description of variable patterns of intonation in Catalan regarding assertions, imperatives, and questions. These patterns are closely tied to pragmatics, with questions having the most variable patterns among Catalan dialects.
The generalized observation of the ongoing processes of variation and change allows the conclusion that schooling in Catalan and the teaching of written Catalan, after a dictatorship that prohibited it, are bringing about changes in pronunciation that are especially conditioned by the written language. These changes tend to be led by the youngest generations in the urban centers that have the most influence over their respective administrative zones. These are important enclaves for the spread of linguistic changes and are areas in which contact with and use of Spanish and, in the early 21st century, other languages are also leaving a mark on phonetics.
Article
Suprasegmental Phenomena in Germanic: Tonal Accent
Pavel Iosad
Several Germanic varieties possess a phonological contrast usually referred to as “tonal accent.” They demonstrate phonological contrasts between words that are otherwise identical in their segmental make-up and the location of stress, as in (Urban East) Norwegian bønder ‘farmers’ and bønner ‘beans’, both segmentally [ˈbønːər]. Usually, the contrast is treated as implemented by pitch trajectories; hence, the name 'tonal accent.' Within Germanic, tonal accent contrasts are found in three (historically, perhaps four) areas. First, they occur in most varieties of Norwegian and Swedish, as well as in some Danish dialects; in addition, most varieties of Danish show a peculiar type of accentual distinction based on laryngealization, traditionally known as stød. Second, they are found in a set of West Germanic dialects along the middle Rhine and the Moselle, the so-called Franconian tonal area. Third, they are reported from many varieties of Low German, specifically North Low Saxon. Finally, they may have been present historically in Frisian.
Three aspects of Germanic tonal accent systems are of particular interest to linguistic theory. In terms of synchronic analysis, accents have been considered as sui generis objects, as fundamentally tonal phenomena, and as artifacts of contrasts in metrical (foot) structure and its mapping to intonation. Diachronically, Germanic accents are a poor fit to the cross-linguistic typology of tonogenesis: their development is intimately tied to processes manipulating metrical structures, such as vowel lengthening, syllable deletion and insertion, and clash resolution. Finally, they offer some enlightening case studies with respect to the role of language contact in the development of prosodic systems.
Article
Writing Systems in Modern West Germanic
Martin Evertz-Rittich
The writing systems of the modern West Germanic languages have many features in common: They are all written using the Modern Roman Alphabet and exhibit a certain depth, that is, in addition to the pure grapheme–phoneme correspondences, prosodic, morphological, and syntactic information that is systematically encoded in their writing systems. A notable exception is the writing system of Yiddish, which is not only written with an alphabet evolved from the Hebrew script but is also almost completely transparent.
Except for Yiddish, all writing systems of modern West Germanic languages use graphematic syllable and foot structures to encode suprasegmental properties such as vowel quantity. Paradigmatic relations are represented by morphological spellings (especially stem and affix constancy). Syntagmatic relations are expressed, for example, in compound spelling, which adheres to the same principles in all writing systems under discussion.
The writing systems of modern West Germanic languages have been studied by grapholinguists in varying depth. While German is probably the best researched writing system in the world, some writing systems, such as Luxembourgish, await thorough grapholinguistic investigation.
Article
Central Italo-Romance (Including Standard Italian)
Elisa De Roberto
Central Italo-Romance includes Standard Italian and the Tuscan dialects, the dialects of the mediana and perimediana areas, as well as Corsican. This macro-area reaches as far north as the Carrara–Senigallia line and as far south as the line running from Circeo in Lazio to the mouth of the Aso river in Le Marche, cutting through Ceprano, Sora, Avezzano, L’Aquila and Accumoli. It is made up of two main subareas: the perimediana dialect area, covering Perugia, Ancona, northeastern Umbria, and Lazio north of Rome, where varieties show greater structural proximity to Tuscan, and the mediana area (central Le Marche, Umbria, central-eastern Lazio varieties, the Sabine or Aquilano-Cicolano-Reatino dialect group). Our description focuses on the shared and diverging features of these groups, with particular reference to phonology, morphology, and syntax.
Article
Phonological Variation and Change in Latin American Spanish
Pedro Martín-Butragueño and Érika Mendoza
“Latin American Spanish” (LAS) represents a substantial portion of the Spanish-speaking world. The geographical distances, the contrasts between rural and extremely urbanized areas, the existence of strong social inequalities and migratory streams, and the presence of a high number of indigenous American languages—all create the conditions for a complex linguistic reality, clearly diversified, while also unitary. Many variable linguistic phenomena correlate with the age of LAS expansion and the continuing massive urbanization that began in the 1960s.
American Spanish-speaking communities have different segmental processes, such as consonantal weakening in intervocalic contexts, deletion in syllabic coda, vowel devoicing, among others. On the prosodic level, there is dialectal variation in intonational patterns and differences in rhythmic properties. Both segmental and prosodic variation is conditioned by linguistic, geographical, and social factors.
