19 juny, 2023
Autors:
Silke Hamann & Francesc Torres-Tamarit
Títol:
Merger in Eivissan Catalan: an acoustic analysis of the vowel systems of young native speakersEditorial: Phonetica (De Gruyter)
Data de publicació: 16 juny 2023
Més informacióThe vowel system of Catalan has been the focus of many studies, though work on the varieties spoken on the island of Eivissa (Ibiza) are scarce, with a single mention of the possible merger of the mid back vowels /o, ɔ/ (Torres Torres, Marià. 1983. Aspectes del vocalisme tònic eivissenc. Eivissa 14. 22–23). The present article provides the first acoustic analysis of the vowel inventory of 25 young native speakers of Eivissan Catalan, with a focus on the realisations of stressed /ə, ɛ/, and the back mid vowels /o, ɔ/. We employed Pillai scores (Hay, Jennifer, Paul Warren & Katie Drager. 2006. Factors influencing speech perception in the context of a merger-in-progress. Journal of Phonetics 34. 458–484) to compare the possibly merged pairs /ə, ɛ/ and /o, ɔ/ to the fully-contrasting neighbouring pairs /e, ɛ/ and /o, u/. Our results show that all participants had considerable overlap of stressed /ə/ and /ɛ/, and all but one had considerable overlap of the back mid vowels, while the fully contrastive pairs (/e, ɛ/ and /o, u/) showed almost no overlap.
13 abril, 2023
Autors:
Clàudia Pons-Moll, Francesc Torres-Tamarit i Ignasi Mascaró
Títol:
Prosodically-driven morpheme non-realization in the Minorcan Catalan DPEditorial: Linguistics, De Gruyter Mouton
Data de publicació: Abril del 2023
Més informació
Text completThis article focuses on a case of prosodically-driven morpheme non-realization found in the Minorcan Catalan DP that has not been documented or accounted for in the previous literature. In this variety of Catalan, kinship restrictive appositive phrases show the realization of the masculine personal article if the following personal name starts with a consonant (es conco en Toni, the-def.art.m uncle the-pers.art.m Toni ‘uncle Toni’), but not if it starts with a vowel (es conco Àngel, the-def.art.m uncle Àngel ‘uncle Àngel’). This asymmetrical pattern is entirely unexpected since a preconsonantal coda is generated in the former cases (cf. es conco en Toni [əs.kòŋ.kun.tɔ́.ni]) and an onsetless syllable and a hiatus are generated in the latter (cf. es conco Àngel [əs.kòŋ.ku.án.ʒəl]). The structures obtained are indeed non-optimizing from a strictly syllabic point of view and stand as a clear case of antimarkedness. We argue that this asymmetric behavior is prosodic in nature, and is mainly driven by the need to keep the left edge of the prosodic word free of clitic material, without challenging basic syllabification constraints active in Catalan. We further justify how the cases under scrutiny shed new light on the typology of alignment constraints referred to the alignment between prosodic and lexical categories, on the nature of morpheme realization constraints, and on the morphosyntax-phonology interface.
13 juliol, 2026
Autors:
Pagliarini, Elena, Anna Lorenzoni & Eduardo Navarrete.
Títol:
The sociolinguistics of Venetan: Examining dialect vitality, identity, and language use in a bilingual communityEditorial: Topics in Linguistics
Data de publicació: 2026
Més informació
Text complet
Keywords:
Venetan, Italian, bilingualism, dialect, identity, language vitality, language documentation, minority languages
Abstract
Research on understudied dialects holds significant importance in unraveling the complexities of bilingual and multilingual environments that often remain overlooked in sociolinguistic inquiry. Dialects can serve as windows into linguistic diversity, shedding light on unique language interactions and sociocultural dynamics. This study focuses on Venetan, a dialect spoken in the Veneto region of northeastern Italy. Employing established bilingualism research methodologies, we examine Venetan use in relation to Italian, analyzing demographic, socio-political, and sociolinguistic factors that influence patterns of dialect use. Our findings reveal that while older individuals still utilize Venetan, the younger population favor Italian, leading to a decline in the dialect's prevalence, despite a strong sense of local pride and community membership. Parents predominantly communicate with their children in Italian, thereby limiting their exposure to the dialect. Additionally, gender disparities emerged, with women exhibiting a greater shift toward Italian than men. These findings contribute to understanding the evolving status of Venetan and underscore the broader sociolinguistic processes shaping language maintenance and shift. We conclude by discussing the implications of these patterns for cognitive science, noting that recent research on Venetan offers valuable insights into the interplay between cognitive mechanisms and language use.
9 juny, 2026
Autors:
Teresa Cabré, Maria Ohannesian, Francesc Torres-Tamarit
Títol:
Los verbos acabados en -uir y las desinencias verbales del español.Editorial: Verba
Col·lecció: VerbaData de publicació: Juny 2026
Més informacióThis paper proposes a morphological segmentation of the regular Spanish verbal paradigm that significantly simplifies its analysis. In the proposed model, the thematic vowel (TV) is always present in the underlying representation of all verbal forms of the three conjugations, either as stressed or as pre-accented. This analysis offers several advantages over more traditional approaches, such as those represented by recent grammars by the Royal Spanish Academy, since it allows the morphological structure of the three regular conjugations to be unified, including verbs whose root ends in a vowel, like those ending in -uir, with an /i/ following the root that has usually been analysed as an antihiatic epenthetic segment. The model also establishes that the thematic vowel of the first, second, and third conjugations is respectively /a/, /e/, and /i/ throughout the present stem and in forms historically derived from the infinitive. In the rest of the paradigm, the first conjugation maintains /a/, whereas the second and third display a common pattern with the alternation /i ~ je/, interpreted synchronically as allomorphy. Surface differences derive from general phonological principles of Spanish, in particular stress assignment and the productive process of stem-final vowel deletion. Tense-aspect-mood morphemes are also regularised.
