Palatalization in the Romance languages

Palatalization strictly speaking refers either to a change in a consonant's place of articulation, such as when the alveolar nasal develops to a palatal nasal , or to a change in secondary articulation, such as when develops to (still alveolar but with the tongue body lifted towards the palate). In Romance linguistics, palatalization is also loosely used to refer to certain sound-changes that are assumed to have followed from 'true' palatalization. For instance, the development from the Latin in to the Italian in is referred to as 'palatalization', despite the resulting not being a palatal sound, because intermediate stages like , may be inferred. == ==

The Latin front vowels developed into a palatal approximant when they were unstressed and followed by another vowel. This occurred regularly by Late Latin. The resulting could then palatalize a preceding consonant. Whether this is best modelled as allophonic () or phonemic () is a matter of scholarly disagreement. This article uses the representation . In addition to palatalization, often geminated preceding consonants. For example and can be reconstructed as developing the pronunciations and , which may have been a means of resolving the "unnatural" syllabifications and . In any case every sequence other than shows some evidence of lengthening in Romance. Palatalization of may have occurred in more than one wave. This has been argued on the grounds that in Western Romance the vowels were not affected by metaphony if followed by original but were affected if followed by other sequences. The implication is that original had lost their palatal element by the time metaphony began to operate. Compare French outcomes like , > , and > . After a consonant, developed into the Old Spanish voiceless affricate , as in > or > (but also ). • In Romanian, regularly became (from earlier *), as in 'kernel' and > . Between vowels, usually results in but sometimes also . These outcomes seem consistent with an original merger of , and (initial or intervocalic) as , followed by fortition of to . The reason for the variation in outcomes of is unclear. • In Sardinian, seems to have merged with in all contexts. • In French, the outcomes of appear consistent with an early merger into in all positions followed by fortition of word-initially or after , yielding modern French . Examples include > and > . (The outcome of is different from the usual outcome of original /rj/ in French.) The sequence developed to (also the usual outcome of /nj/), as in > and > . In Central Italian, Southern Italian, and Western Romance languages, Latin became . In Central and Southern Italian, this occurs as a geminate between vowels. A geminate can be inferred for early Western Romance as well based on the evolution of preceding vowels. In French, a few words show an alternative outcome with the fricative , corresponding to an original in Old French (and identical to the regular outcome of /mj/). Examples include 'linen' > , > 'strange', and > . This outcome may represent cases where /j/ did not palatalize the preceding /n/ but was strengthened into an affricate instead; alternatively, it has been explained as resulting from the affrication of a palatalized nasal (via a sequence of changes such as > > ). It has also been suggested that the words in question are 'learned', that is, borrowed from Latin early and subjected to the vernacular sound-changes > and > . As for the sequence , it regularly developed to [◌̃ʒ], again like /mj/; compare the regular development of to in words like > . In Balkan Romance became , which is retained in Aromanian and the Banat dialect of Romanian. In Romanian, was denasalized to , and then often deleted, as in , > , 'heel', 'vineyard'. The Latin geminate seems to have developed likewise to before (the only clear example is > Old Romanian , later replaced by the analogical plural ), whereas originally singleton remained before (as in > , > ), which Barbato interprets as a sign that was previously geminated (although not palatalized until the original length contrast between and had been replaced with a fortis-lenis contrast). Based on the development of preceding vowels, Sampson 1995 reconstructs an initial stage with a heterosyllabic nasal + glide sequence (containing a coda nasal archiphoneme ) at the point where vowel nasalization and raising occurred in early Romanian. In Sardinian, original developed into a cluster of a nasal and voiced affricate, as in > Nuorese , Campidanese , Logudorese . A similar outcome is found in some southern varieties of Corsican, as in > . As in French, the nasal + affricate clusters in Sardinian have been interpreted either as the result of reinforcement of syllable-initial in without palatalization of the nasal or as the result of a palatalization of /nj/ followed by reinforcement of the resulting palatalized consonant. The sequence yielded the palatal lateral throughout Western Romance as well as in Southern and Central Italy. Like , the resulting is geminated in Central and Southern Italian, and was in Western Romance prior to the general simplification of geminates in most languages from that branch. In many cases subsequently delateralized to . In Iberia, remains in Aragonese and Portuguese but developed to in Asturian and in Old Spanish. In Catalan the outcomes are regionally split: most eastern and all Balearic dialects have , while the remaining dialects (including that of Barcelona) have . In dialects of central and eastern Iberia that retained , this consonant merged with a later that developed from Latin /ll/; this can be seen in the aforementioned Catalan dialects as well as Navarro-Aragonese and some western varieties of Leonese. In Balkan Romance yielded * (apparently a geminate at first). In Romanian this was delateralized to , as in > * > 'leaf'. The stage survives in the Banat dialect as well as Aromanian. In some Sardinian varieties, the ultimate outcome of is a geminate voiced affricate, as in > Logudorese or Campidanese . These can be interpreted as resulting either from palatalization of followed by affrication of the resulting palatal lateral or from fortition of a syllable-initial (as after ) followed by assimilation of the preceding , as in * > * > . The dialect of Cagliari has , which probably developed via depalatalization of former . In Western Romance, universally developed via to (which can also be written [jr] and interpreted as a case of metathesis). French displays this development, as in and > . Italo-Romance languages show various outcomes including loss of the , loss of the , and gemination to . In Balkan Romance, seems to have developed variously into , , and . Examples of variable reflexes in Romanian are > 'farmyard', > , and > 'I appear (dialectal)'. survives as a consonant cluster in Sardinian, as in 'leather' > Nuorese , Logudorese , and Campidanese ; and also some varieties of southern Corsican, as in > . Intervocalic shows the following outcomes: • Portuguese has , as in 'cheese' > or > 'kiss'. • In Spanish the outcome can be traced back to an original . The combined with a preceding vowel, forming diphthongs that were later modified, and the eventually devoiced to . Examples of this development are 'cheese' 'house', probably via the intermediate stage of a palatalized sibilant such as . The combined with a preceding vowel, forming various diphthongs that were later modified. • In Tuscan, intervocalic developed at first to or sometimes ; these eventually merged with the phonemes when the latter developed the allophones in intervocalic position. Standard Italian today has a uniform pronunciation of as (with no intervocalic ), likely the result of spelling-pronunciation by speakers outside of Tuscany. • In Romanian became , as in > 'cheese'. • In Sardinia and the south of Italy, developed to (voiced in some areas to phonetic ). Examples of this outcome are Nuorese Sardinian and Neapolitan 'cheese' Italian . Labial + The palatalization of labials is cross-linguistically rare and a variety of strategies for avoiding it are attested such as preservation of the cluster , gemination of the consonant before , metathesis of , and change of to a palatal consonant. All of these outcomes are found in Romance. Intervocalic and merged as in 'Vulgar Latin'. When this sound was followed by , it was sometimes lost or delabialized early on, causing to yield the same outcome as (and /dj ɡj/) in some words. This can be seen in French from and from , or Spanish from and (archaic) from . In a larger set of words, was initially retained but underwent diverse developments in different Romance languages. Gemination In Italian, intervocalic show gemination of the labial consonant, resulting in . Examples include > , > , > , > , > . Western Romance shows inconsistent application of gemination in intervocalic labial + clusters; some forms such as Spanish 'cuttlefish' 'celery', > 'anger, rage', > 'red-haired', and > 'fiancé'. It has been argued that the labial consonant and palatal glide did not switch positions in a single abrupt step, but underwent the following series of sound changes: • First, labial + sequences coalesced into palatalized labial consonants . Spellings such as may attest to the original development of palatalized consonants in this context (compare the still-current use in Portuguese of as spellings for ). • Next, an epenthetic glide developed between a vowel and a following palatalized labial consonant. • Finally, palatalized labial consonants were depalatalized, becoming plain labials preceded by a (now phonemically distinct) palatal glide. It appears that these changes occurred between Old and Medieval Portuguese, at a later date than the palatalization and 'metathesis' of , and in Hispano-Romance: metathesis of + is found regularly in both Spanish and Portuguese, and was followed by a shift from to that can be seen in Portuguese , , , whereas metathesis of labial + occurs regularly in Portuguese but not in Spanish, and affected Portuguese words show unshifted . The Portuguese metathesis of labial + sequences occurred late enough to affect some cases of secondary that developed after lenition of a following intervocalic consonant (as in > * > 'clean' and > * > 'I eat'). In cases where a palatalized consonant came after another consonant or after the vowel (e.g. modern Portuguese 'clean'), the original may be attested only indirectly in the modern language by its effect of raising a preceding vowel (metaphony). In Spanish, Latin labial + sequences did not systematically undergo metathesis; the general outcome is simply a labial consonant followed by . This is shown by the following examples: > 'celery', > 'anger, rage'; > 'blond', > 'boyfriend'. However, metathesis of original to is seen in forms of two Spanish verbs, 'to know' and 'to fit': the effects of this metathesis are seen in forms like ( Romanian , > , and > . The glide remained after an unstressed syllable, as in > . Glide strengthening In various Romance languages, original labial + sequences gave rise to palatal obstruents (sometimes accompanied or followed by loss of the labial articulation). Palatal obstruents may have developed in this context by strengthening of the palatal glide component of palatalized labial consonants. • Some Balkan Romance languages, after the split of Proto-Romanian, show the development of pronunciations like , , and from labial consonants followed by or , as in 'child'. These seem to have arisen from palatalized labials such as by 'consonantification' of the offglide. • Old Provençal shows , > , 'red' > , > , > , > , 'monkey' > , > , > . The Old French pronunciations are likely derived from simplification of labial-affricate sequences such as or . (Forms with a retained labial consonant, such as and , are attested in Hebrew–Old French glosses.) These may have developed from palatalized labial consonants by means of offglide consonantization (as in Balkan Romance); e.g. > > . A competing explanation of the French outcomes is that Latin remained clusters, and then the postconsonantal /j/ underwent fortition (with the resulting affricate being assimilated in voice to the preceding consonant). • In Neapolitan (in southern Italy), and ultimately became geminate affricates as in > and > 'rage'. These may have developed from sequences; an alternative explanation is that geminated palatalized labials were reinterpreted as palatal consonants due to acoustic similarity. == + front vowel ==

were palatalized before in all of Romance except certain varieties of Sardinian and Dalmatian. Palatalization in this context can be dated to about the fifth century AD, although it is possible that it occurred independently and at a later date in eastern Romance compared to western Romance. In Romanian, unlike most Romance languages, palatalization occurred after the loss of the in sequences of or + front vowel, hence the affricates in , > modern 'gum'; , as in > 'to scold'; and , as in > . The development to seems to be typical in verbs. • There are relatively few examples of the outcome of before a front vowel in Italian and Spanish. The sequence in the Latin verb forms and * developed the same way as original . This has been cited as evidence that developed to before a front vowel, based on the assumption that here underwent syncope to ; however, it is possible that these outcomes instead reflect the aforementioned early loss of intervocalic between non-back vowels, followed by a change of the prior vowel into a glide (yielding ). Malkiel (1982) notes the scarcity of examples for the outcome of + front vowel in Old Spanish and considers there to only be a single indirect example of its outcome, the modern Asturian verb , tentatively assumed to descend from via an intermediate stage *. • before a front vowel usually yielded (modern ) in Old Spanish, as in > arcilla "clay". Alternatively it could reduce to ; compare the eleventh-century spellings for ‘silver’ and for . In Tuscany the outcome is , apart from (again) , an early variant of . In southern Italy the outcome is . The palatalization of before appears to have initially resulted in an affricate, either or . The outcome is found in Italian and Romanian, while or a derivative thereof is found in many Western Romance languages and also Aromanian. (Possible reasons for the outcome were mentioned earlier.) In Western Romance, intervocalic Latin before a front vowel was affected by both palatalization and voicing and so generally had an outcome distinct from that of initial or post-consonantal before . Postconsonantal When preceded by a consonant, remained voiceless in Western Romance (as in Portuguese from ). In some languages, shows a special outcome. In Portuguese, before a front vowel became , as in , from , . In Tuscan, + front vowel became when intervocalic, elsewhere (seemingly via > > ). == ==

(in red). Oïl dialects south or east of it show palatalized outcomes of . In some Gallo-Romance languages, came to be palatalized before original . This is assumed to have taken place more recently than the palatalization of before high and mid front vowels (see above) and can have a different outcome from the latter. Palatalization and affrication of before occurred in all central French dialects, but not in (north) Norman and (northwest) Picard dialects that lie north or west of the Joret line. Nevertheless, outcomes such as the Picard , . This remains distinct from the outcome of before and , as in 'hundred' > . Similarly, before developed to a sound spelt ( in Old French and today), as in > . This apparently predated the general monophthongization of Latin to French , as it affected words like > and > . The implication, then, is that palatalization occurred before the end of the eighth century, perhaps as early as the end of the fifth or start of the sixth century. The phenomenon is also found in Occitan, where it is attested since the earliest texts in that language. Northern dialects tend to have it and southern ones tend not to, but neither group is uniform in this regard, and the geographic extent of palatalization is subject to considerable lexical variation. That its distribution shows a clear weakening from north to south, and that toponyms with apparent retention of can be found in northern palatalizing areas, suggests that this kind of palatalization was historically imported into Occitan from French dialects. The Occitan outcomes of palatalized by vary by dialect; they include , , , and rarely . Compare Lemosin 'horse' and > 'leg', while in central and northern Friulian the plosive outcomes are found instead. == Velar + coronal ==

Latin yield palatalized reflexes in much of Romance. According to some accounts, this resulted from the vocalization of the velar consonant, resulting in a glide that then went to palatalize the following coronal (potentially coalescing with it). It has been alternatively hypothesized that palatalized pronunciations of these clusters could have arisen by gestural blending at a point where the first consonant was not yet vocalized. The most widespread outcome of is , merging with the outcome of /nj/. This is the case throughout Western Romance (cf. Spanish , Portuguese , Catalan 'wood'), and in Sardinian (where it developed to , as in > ). Loans into Albanian show a mixture of outcomes: sometimes as in , . • Portuguese has and . • In Occitan, can result either in or in an affricate or fricative such as , , . The outcome of can be , or . • Rhaeto-Romance languages show a split in the outcome of . An affricate or palatal stop is found in Surselvan, Sutselvan, and most of Surmeiran. Engadinian dialects of Romansh show (or in a handful of words ), as in > ; the use of is sometimes interpreted as a secondary development from or as an outcome imported from Lombardy. The Italian Rhaeto-Romance languages show (as in Italian). In Ladin, yields and generally yields , although some alternative outcomes are also found. The development of vowels before in Ladin suggests the original presence of coda or of palatalization in this context. Outside of Western Romance, Latin typically have non-palatalized outcomes: • Italian has , as in (as in > ), which Orel attributes to borrowing from a West Balkan variety showing the same development as Western Romance, whereas others show the outcome (as in > ), with the velar changed to a labial as in Romanian. /nkt/ The sequence underwent palatalization in much of Western Romance. An evolution like * > * > * may be reconstructed for the modern outcomes (found in some Rhaeto-Romance varieties) and (found in some Occitan varieties). An alternative evolution like * > * > appears to have taken place in some other Occitan varieties as well as French. Other branches of Romance show non-palatalized outcomes, predominantly (Italian, Catalan, Ibero-Romance) but also (Balkan Romance). The outcomes of 'holy' include Occitan , French ; Catalan , Italian-Portuguese-Spanish ; and Old Romanian (modern ). /uls ult/ In Spanish, Latin show the same palatalized outcomes as . This is probably a consequence of velarization of in this context. Per Penny, before developed to * and then *. Subsequently * palatalized the following consonant, as in , > , . (This was blocked by a following consonant, as in > .) Similarly, Latin yielded in Aragonese (cf. for in the Glosas Emilianenses) and in Portuguese (cf. < < ). == Obstruent + /l/ ==

The Latin sequences yield palatalized reflexes in numerous Romance languages. This probably began with allophonically turning to after a velar consonant; the resulting inventory * is reflected in Balkan Romance, northern Abruzzese, old Gallo-Italic, and old Venetian. Controversially, the outcomes in most of Gallo-Romance and Catalan can also be traced to the same original inventory if one assumes that there followed, for phonological reasons, a reversion of * to in fortis positions after the lenition of * to in lenis positions. This is at odds with the traditional view that Latin remained unchanged in fortis positions all along. The outcomes in Italo-Romance (other than northern Abruzzese) can be traced to an inventory * that probably developed from the one described above via generalization of post-obstruent . The same is true for a U-shaped band of Gallo-Romance dialects that surround northern France and include most of Franco-Provençal. In Ibero-Romance most often merged to a single palatalized outcome, but there are also some words showing retention of (or > ). Said retentions have often been attributed to borrowing or ‘learned’ influence from Latin, but lexical (in)frequency has also been proposed as an explanation, perhaps alongside factors like dissimilation or avoidance of homonymy. The earliest evidence for the merger of to one (palatalized) sound is found in eleventh-century documents with forms like for , for , and for . The results of are mixed but consistently non-palatal in word-initial position. Postconsonantal After a consonant, Spanish and Portuguese show palatalization of Latin to the voiceless affricate , as in Spanish > 'wide', > 'to swell', and > 'male' (Portuguese , , ; in Portuguese developed from to ). There are also some cases in Spanish of being palatalized in postconsonantal position, such as > (cf. the Mozarabic unya attested in the tenth century). In contrast, postconsonantal show nonpalatalized outcomes in French and Catalan, as in > French , Catalan and > French , Catalan . Intervocalic /kl ɡl/ In Gallo– and Ibero-Romance, intervocalic developed to , merging with the outcome of /lj/. There are competing explanations for this: one is > > > , another is > > > > (the latter parallel to the development of /-kt ks-/). In Italian and Romanian, intervocalic instead shows loss of lateral articulation rather than loss of the original stop, as in > Italian 'eye' (with ) or > Romanian 'ear' (with ). In Friulian, the general outcome of intervocalic is with a number of words showing instead, sometimes in variation with . It has been proposed that the different outcomes can be explained by word-stress, but the data seem too inconsistent to support this. In Ladin, intervocalic was conserved in the dialects of Sol and Non; voiced to in the dialect of Fodom; and (perhaps under Germanic influence) turned to in the dialects of Gardena, Badia, and Mareo. == /ll nn/ and initial /l n/ ==

/ll l-/ Latin was palatalized to in Asturian, Leonese, Spanish, Aragonese, and Catalan. This appears to have been a relatively late development. In some areas this merged with an identical outcome of Latin /lj/ (and /kl ɡl/). In Catalan, as well as some western dialects of Asturian, word-initial was also palatalized to . In other western dialects of Asturian, and also of Leonese, there is a variety of palatalized outcomes collectively dubbed the 'che vaqueira'. The earliest evidence for the palatalization of is found in tenth-century documents from the Kingdom of León, which show forms like and for and . /nn n-/ Latin was palatalized in much the same area as . Cf. 'year' > Astur-Leonese au, Spanish ao, Aragonese ao, and Catalan a. Palatalization of word-initial to is also found in Astur-Leonese. == Morphological consequences ==

Verbs The original presence of either or a front vowel in some conjugations but not in others resulted in patterns of alternation between different stems for different person-number combinations. These alternations were frequently subject to morphological leveling, but they could alternatively be extended by analogy to verbs with different etymologies; these competing tendencies often resulted in irregular verb outcomes. The outcomes of the verb (discussed above) provide examples of leveling and analogical extension. In Spanish, it initially developed to , but this was later changed under the influence of the form to , which in modern Spanish has been fully leveled to . In Italian, the found in the forms , (by regular sound change) and (analogical), > (by analogy), and . Nouns In Romanian, the masculine plural ending and the feminine regularly palatalize a preceding velar consonant. For example, the plurals of and [koˈleɡə] ('colleague', masculine and feminine respectively) are and . The Italian masculine plural often does so as well, but this is not systematic; compare the alternating 'male friend(s)' with the non-alternating 'desk(s)'. == Orthographic consequences ==

In some cases, the spelling of palatalized consonants simply remained the same as that of the Latin sounds or sequences that they originated from. For instance, in Spanish represents the palatal lateral (which often developed from Latin , as in Portuguese , with also extended to words that never had a , as in < . Italian, which often retained Latin in that context (cf. < *), did not end up using for + front vowel. Instead, it borrowed the scholarly Latin practice of using to indicate (no matter the following sound) with an analogical added for . Thus < or < . Morphological alternations In many cases front vowels occurring in noun or verb endings did not trigger the palatalization of a preceding velar consonant. This is broadly the case for the present subjunctive in Italo-Western Romance, which leads to spelling alternations of the type seen in Catalan 'he touches' versus '[that] he touch', pronounced and respectively. In Italian such alternations occur not only in verbs but also nouns, since velar consonants often remain unpalatalized before the masculine plural ending and always before the feminine . Thus the plurals of 'place' and 'girlfriend' are and , pronounced and . } == Notes ==