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7 - Effects of Stress

from Part Two - Phonetics and Phonology

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 June 2022

By
Judith Meinschaefer
Edited by
Adam Ledgeway  and
Martin Maiden
Adam Ledgeway
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge
Martin Maiden
Affiliation:
University of Oxford
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Summary

This chapter deals with phonological and morpho-lexical phenomena in Romance that are conditioned by prominence or – more generally speaking – metrical structure. Relevant in this respect are synchronic phonological effects on surface forms, in other words, systematic alternations, as well as diachronic effects on underlying representations, that is, on linguistic inventories and systems. Among the phonological effects of prominence treated here are lengthening, well-attested in Italian, and diphthongization of stressed vowels – found in most Romance languages. Of equal interest are effects of non-prominence, such as vowel aphaeresis, apocope and syncope, and vowel reduction. As to phenomena conditioned by constraints on metrical well-formedness, considered here as effects of stress, the chapter deals with the Italo-Romance type of consonant gemination, as well as compensatory lengthening more generally. Adjacent stresses may be subject to clash resolution, a phenomenon that has been described for some, but not all, Romance languages. In the realm of morphophonology, alternations of the verb root often depend on the position of stress, which is particularly evident for diphthongization. The chapter ends with a discussion of how metrical structure shapes the form of words, imposing requirements on the minimal size of lexical entries.

Keywords

apocopeclash resolutioncompensatory lengtheningconsonant geminationmetrical structureprominenceprosodic minimalityword stresssyncopevowel length
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Romance Linguistics , pp. 234 - 260
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Selected References

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D’Imperio, M. and Rosenthall, S. (1999). ‘Phonetics and phonology of main stress in Italian’, Phonology 16: 1–28.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
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Nespor, M. and Vogel, I. (1989). ‘On clashes and lapses’, Phonology 6: 69–116.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Post, B. (1999). ‘Restructured phonological phrases in French: evidence from clash resolution’, Linguistics 37: 41–63.Google Scholar
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Vigário, M. (2016). ‘Segmental phenomena and their interactions: evidence for prosodic organization and the architecture of grammar’. In Fischer, S. and Gabriel, C. (eds), Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance. Berlin: De Gruyter, 41–73.Google Scholar

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