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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/23510
Description
Title
Andalusian vocalism and related processes
Author(s)
Sanders, Benjamin Patric
Issue Date
1994
Doctoral Committee Chair(s)
Hualde, Jose Ignacio
Department of Study
Language, Linguistics
Language, Modern
Discipline
Language, Linguistics
Language, Modern
Degree Granting Institution
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Degree Name
Ph.D.
Degree Level
Dissertation
Keyword(s)
Language, Linguistics
Language, Modern
Language
eng
Abstract
"The vowel systems of languages differ in their inventories and contrastive features. The actual phonetic realization of the phonemic vowel inventory depends on a variety of factors involving the overall phonological and morphological organization of a given language. These factors may serve to reduce or multiply the phonetic realizations of the phonemic vowel system. The laxing of vowels in plural nouns and certain verbal forms in eastern Andalusian Spanish is an example of a contextually induced complication of the vowel system. Investigators such as Navarro Tomas (1939), Alonso et al. (1950), Salvador (1957, 1977) and others claim that the phonemic vowel inventory of eastern Andalusian has ""doubled"" (desdoblamiento) from the five of standard Spanish to as many as ten. The trigger for ""doubling"" is the aspiration or deletion of word-final /s/, which serves as the plural marker and is also present in common verbal inflections."
The phonologization of vowel laxing would represent a complication of the relatively simple five vowel system of Standard Spanish. Proponents of desdoblamiento claim that the tense/lax alternation is phonemic because minimal pairs can be distinguished based on position. The difficulty is that vowel laxing appears to be a harmony process and rarely affects only one position within a word. Vowel laxing is an integral continuance of the lenition process. Operating within the parameters of lenition are certain types of fortition processes such as gemination and compensatory lengthening. The basic problem at the descriptive level is to determine if eastern Andalusian laxing is truly systematic and to what degree.
The results of the investigation reveal that the alternation of tense/lax vowels is an important phonological process. The laxing of vowels in the plural and in certain words ending in non-etymological /s/ is shown to be phonetically motivated (Pickett 1980, Pierrehumbert and Talkin 1992). Recent works by McCarthy (1989) and Gorecka (1989) suggest that articulations produced in the pharyngeal, laryngeal, and glottal zones may group as a natural class of sounds. The laxing of vowels in eastern Andalusian therefore has a phonetic motivation as well as a phonological explanation.
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