Camuno height harmony

• Autores: Michela Cresci
• Localización: Italian journal of linguistics, ISSN 1120-2726, Vol. 27, Nº. 2, 2015, págs. 43-74
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • This work describes and explains harmonic patterns in Camuno, an understudied, endangered Romance language spoken in Valcamonica, northern Italy, within the general framework of Evolutionary Phonology (Blevins 2004, 2006, 2013). Camuno exhibits a unique system of stress-dependent height harmony within a nine-vowel system /i u y e ɛ ø o a/. In all words, stressed high vowel /i/ triggers raising of preceding mid vowels, while stressed /u/ only raises preceding mid rounded vowels. Although stressed /y/ as a trigger is not found in the native vocabulary, distributional patterns suggest that it is an even weaker trigger than /u/, potentially raising only preceding /ø/. The low vowel /a/ blocks harmony. In addition, this study attempts to illuminate the special status of the front rounded vowel /ø/ in harmony contexts. Due to its historical origins from stressed Latin short /o/ in open syllables (cf. Loporcaro 2011) this Camuno vowel is contrastive only in stressed syllables in the native lexicon. While one might expect raising of /ø/ to [y] under harmony, a range of factors determines [u] in some cases and either [u] or [y] in others. While height harmony in Camuno is a phonetically natural process with origins in common co-articulatory patterns, the details of this sound pattern also reflect accidents of history, and aspects of the Camuno lexico