Sibilant mergers in 18th-century Basque: A quantitative study
EGURTZEGI, Ander
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique [CNRS]
Centre de recherche sur la langue et les textes basques [IKER]
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique [CNRS]
Centre de recherche sur la langue et les textes basques [IKER]
EGURTZEGI, Ander
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique [CNRS]
Centre de recherche sur la langue et les textes basques [IKER]
< Reduce
Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique [CNRS]
Centre de recherche sur la langue et les textes basques [IKER]
Language
en
Article de revue
This item was published in
Phonological Data and Analysis. 2022-08-01, vol. 04, n° 05, p. 1-31
Linguistic Society of America
English Abstract
Conservative Basque dialects distinguish apical (/s̺/and /t͡s̺/) and laminal (/s̻/and /t͡s̻/)alveolar sibilants in the fricative and affricate series. This paper analyses the changes this system was undergoing in the Central ...Read more >
Conservative Basque dialects distinguish apical (/s̺/and /t͡s̺/) and laminal (/s̻/and /t͡s̻/)alveolar sibilants in the fricative and affricate series. This paper analyses the changes this system was undergoing in the Central Basque variety of San Sebastián in the 18th century: (1) the “Western merger”: neutralisation of the laminal and apical fricative sibilants in favour of the latter and the neutralisation of the laminal and apical alveolar affricates in favour of the former, which started in Western Basque and spread to some Central varieties, and (2) the “Central merger”, a more recent development, limited to some central dialects, where both fricative and affricate alveolar sibilants are realised as laminals. A generalised linear mixed-effects model was fitted to the data extracted from an early-18th-century manuscript which shows evidence of both mergers. We propose that sibilant mergers were still in progress in the variety and time period under study and that they are interrelated processes. The Western merger started as a phonetically-conditioned sound change due to coarticulation to a following consonant. As this neutralisation extended to other positions,a hypercorrective change was initiated in some Central varieties, which eventually resulted in a mirror-image process, namely a change from apical to laminal fricatives.Read less <
English Keywords
Sibilants
Basque
Merger
Corpus study
ANR Project
Approches modernes à la phonologie diachronique appliquée au basque - ANR-20-CE27-0007
Origin
Hal importedCollections