A Stratal Phonological Analysis of Stem-Level and Word-Level Effects in Old French Compensatory Vowel Lengthening upon Coda /s/ Deletion

Datos Bibliográficos

ID5900993
AutoresFrancisco Antonio Montaño (0000-0002-9442-866X, City University of New York, autor de correspondencia)
Año2024
Volumen9
Número5
Páginas177
Fecha de publicación2024-05-13
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaLanguages (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 2226-471X • E-ISSN: 2226-471X
EditorialMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/languages9050177
OpenAlexW4396896209
IdiomaEN
Referencias citadas26

The well-known deletion of coda sibilants in Old French (11th-14th centuries) induced a compensatory lengthening effect on the preceding vowel, generally described as applying uniformly where coda /s/ was lost. This study highlights and analyzes phonological contexts where lengthening likely did not occur, examining their interaction with stress assignment, vowel quality, schwa adjustment, prothesis, and morphological structure. The Stratal OT analysis formalizes the proposed pattern differentiating the long and short vowel reflexes identified especially for mid vowels: while categorical in tonic syllables and low vowels /a, ɑ/ irrespective of stress, lengthening only prevails in atonic mid vowels when coda /s/ deletion impacts a syllable assigned stress within the specific stratal phonological cycle when /s/ is deleted from input. The resulting length is transmitted and preserved in subsequent stratal cycles regardless of eventual word-level stress reassignment, especially (but not exclusively) because of word-level schwa adjustment, allowing a shift to word-final stress and producing an opacity effect of a long atonic mid vowel inherited from an earlier cycle. The stratal account formalizes observed analogical effects between lexical items and derived forms with respect to vowel quality and length and proposes them to result instead from the interplay of morphology and phonology

Coda · Linguistics · Vowel · History · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Philosophy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Speech Recognition and Synthesis · Geology