This volume should be of great interest to phoneticians, phonologists, and both historical and cognitive linguists. Using data from the Romance languages for the most part, the book explores the phonetic motivation of several sound changes, e.g., glide insertions and elisions, vowel and consonant… read more
The origins of sound change is one of the oldest and most challenging questions in the study of language. The goal of this volume is to examine current approaches to sound change from a variety of theoretical and methodological perspectives, including articulatory variation and modeling, speech… read more
This paper deals with the historical development of the syllable-onset clusters /kl gl pl bl fl/ in Romance languages and dialects and with their articulatory and/or perceptual motivations. Several diachronic pathways are identified which depart from articulatory unstable [Cʎ] sequences, most… read more
This study is an investigation of the phonetic causes of stressed mid and low vowel raising and diphthongization before single palatal consonants and [jC] sequences in the Early Romance languages, as for example [a] raising in Spanish leche derived from Latin [ˈlakte] ‘milk’. The initial… read more
The paper reviews experimental and descriptive data on /l/ vocalization and elision and related vowel shifts in the Romance languages, and argues that a given sound change may be achieved through different evolutionary paths. While prevailing theories tend to attribute a single articulatory or… read more
Experimental and descriptive evidence from the Romance languages suggests that velar and dental stop consonant softening, i.e., the process by which stops of these places of articulation turn mostly into palatoalveolar or alveolar affricates or fricatives, has proceeded gradually through… read more
?This paper provides support for the DAC model of coarticulation by showing that directionality patterns of vowel and consonant coarticulation in VCV sequences are inversely related. Thus, VCV sequences with dark [ɫ] exhibit more vowel-to-consonant anticipation than carryover, due to the salient… read more
This paper is an investigation processes of sound change (i.e., assimilations, dissimilations, elisions) affecting diphthongs and triphthongs derived from Latin mid low vowels in Romance. This analysis is carried out with reference to the Degree of Articulatory Constraint model of coarticulation… read more
