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Segmental Phonology, Phonotactics, and Syllable Structure in the Romance Languages

Schmid, Stephan (2024). Segmental Phonology, Phonotactics, and Syllable Structure in the Romance Languages. In: Loporcaro, Michele. Oxford Research Encyclopedias: Linguistics. Oxford: Oxford University Press, Epub ahead of print.

Abstract

From the perspective of phonological typology, the Romance languages exhibit considerable diversity, although they all originate from the same ancestor language, that is, “Vulgar Latin.” Most consonant inventories are of average size, with 20–23 phonemes, whereas typologically marked segments (e.g., palatal obstruents or retroflex consonants) only occur in a minority of Romance varieties. Instead, the number of vowel phonemes varies substantially, ranging from 5 in Spanish to 16 in French (which features front rounded vowels and nasal vowels). Substantial differences also exist regarding the treatment of unstressed vowels, which are subject to various degrees of reduction—including their deletion in both diachrony and synchrony. Consequently, such phonological processes yield various degrees of phonotactic complexity: While most Romance varieties are commonly counted among the so-called syllable languages, with a strong preference for open syllables and relatively simple consonant clusters ordered along the sonority scale, some dialects depart from this general tendency, allowing complex consonant clusters that may also run against the sonority sequencing generalization.

Additional indexing

Item Type:Book Section, refereed, original work
Communities & Collections:06 Faculty of Arts > Institute of Romance Studies
06 Faculty of Arts > Institute of Computational Linguistics
Dewey Decimal Classification:000 Computer science, knowledge & systems
410 Linguistics
Language:English
Date:17 July 2024
Deposited On:08 Aug 2024 10:56
Last Modified:08 Aug 2024 10:56
Publisher:Oxford University Press
ISBN:9780199384655
OA Status:Closed
Publisher DOI:https://doi.org/10.1093/acrefore/9780199384655.013.433

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