Mascaró (2019). On the Lack of Evidence for Nonmyopic Harmony

Autors:

Joan Mascaró

Títol:

On the Lack of Evidence for Nonmyopic Harmony

Editorial: Linguistic Inquiry, vol.50(4). MIT Press
Data de publicació: Tardor de 2019
ISBN13: E-ISSN: 1530-9150

Més informació

One important property that has been attributed to unbounded spreading is myopia (spreading from T to U is independent of whether spreading can proceed into Z, where U is located between T and Z). Walker (Linguistic Inquiry 4.1, 2010) claims that metaphony in two Italo-Romance dialects, Grado and Central Veneto, does not obey myopia. My paper examines the evidence presented, as well as additional evidence. The evidence shows that in early 20th century Grado harmony is myopic, while in Central Veneto and the more recent variety of Grado there is no evidence in favor of non-myopic spreading. I conclude that the generalization that all attested unbounded spreading processes obey myopia still holds, and in particular that Romance metaphony is myopic. The paper concludes with a brief discussion of the problem of the quality of linguistic data.