Vowel length from Latin to Romance / Michele Loporcaro.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Loporcaro, Michele.

Series:

Oxford studies in diachronic and historical linguistics ; 10.

Oxford studies in diachronic & historical linguistics ; 10

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Romance languages--Vowels.

Romance languages.

Romance languages--History.

History.

Physical Description:

xvi, 306 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University press, 2015, cop. 2015.

Contents:

1 Introduction 1

1.1 The starting point: vowel length in Classical Latin 1

1.2 The long-term trend: Latin harbingers of the loss of CVL 9

1.3 Structure of the argument and aims of the book 12

2 Vowel length in the Latin-Romance transition 18

2.1 Change in Latin VL: metalinguistic testimonies and the rise of OSL 20

2.2 Why OSL must be Proto-Romance: excluding conceivable alternatives 25

2.2.1 OSL at a later date, and only in some Romance languages 25

2.2.2 OSL in Republican Latin? 30

2.3 The rise of OSL and the regional diversification of Latin 40

2.3.1 Evidence from metrical inscriptions, part 1: Herman (1982) 41

2.3.2 Evidence from metrical inscriptions, part 2: Adams (1999) 46

2.3.3 Latin and Romance in Africa 47

2.4 Quality is not quantity, after all 51

2.5 Intermediate summary and provisional conclusion 57

3 The development of VL in Romance 61

3.1 Three types of distribution of VL in the Romance languages 61

3.2 In defence of Open Syllable Lengthening in modern Standard Italian 65

3.3 The eastern and western peripheries of Romance 75

3.4 Northern Romance 80

3.4.1 Northern Italo-Romance 82

3.4.2 Gallo-Romance 101

3.4.3 (The rest of) Rhaeto-Romance 108

3.5 Summing up: VL and OSL from Proto-Romance to the modern languages 115

4 The analysis of Northern Romance vowel length 121

4.1 Competing analyses of the rise of CVL in Northern Italo-Romance 121

4.1.1 Formal accounts of the rise of VL in Milanese 124

4.1.2 Competing explanations of the rise and status of VL in Friulian 129

4.1.3 Alternative formal accounts for the rise of VL in Cremonese 132

4.2 Diachronic phonology, generative grammar, and method in historical linguistics 133

4.3 Too much synchrony into diachrony, too much diachrony into synchrony 138

5 Dialect variation and comparative reconstruction 145

5.1 At the vanguard of change: the fading of contrastive VL in Northern Italo-Romance 147

5.1.1 Loss of CVL in peripheral Friulian dialects 148

5.1.2 The areal pattern of CVL in Liguria and Piedmont 149

5.1.3 The fading of CVL in Alpine and Eastern Lombard 152

5.1.4 The position of Venetan 163

5.2 Apocope and the rise of contrastive VL in Northern Romance 164

5.2.1 On the non-co-occurrence of CVL and apocope 165

5.2.2 The gradual spread of apocope in Northern Italo-Romance 168

5.3 The rearguard of change: at the source of VL in Northern Romance 172

5.3.1 Geminate consonants and VL in Alpine Lombard 174

5.3.2 On the southern periphery of Northern Romance 184

5.3.3 Phonetic gradience in vowel and consonant length and the change from PRom gemination to NRom CVL 190

5.3.4 A closer look at Western Romance degemination 194

5.3.5 The odd one out: CVL without degemination south of the Apennines? 200

5.4 Making sense of the comparative picture 203

5.4.1 A phonetic constraint on vowel length: rhythmical compensation 208

5.4.2 Romance oxytones and VL 214

5.5 Taking stock of the reconstructive evidence 223

6 In lieu of a conclusion 227.

Notes:

Bibliogr. pages [250]-286. Index. Notes bibliogr.

ISBN:

9780199656554

019965655X

OCLC:

921301861

Publisher Number:

9780199656554