Open AccessThe relationship between palatalisation and labial consonants in Castilian Spanish
Author(s) -
César Gutiérrez
Publication year - 2020
Publication title -
loquens
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.117
H-Index - 1
ISSN - 2386-2637
DOI - 10.3989/loquens.2020.071
Subject(s) - articulation (sociology) , place of articulation , phonetics , consonant , assimilation (phonology) , linguistics , consonant cluster , romance languages , history , philosophy , vowel , politics , political science , law
In spite of the many studies devoted to the palatal outcomes of the Latin clusters PL and FL in Old Spanish, some other clusters and sequences composed of labial consonants such as -PUL-, -BVL-, -BE,I-, -VE,I- and -MI- have received little attention. The aim of this paper is to analyze the phonetic aspects of the diachronic evolution of these clusters and sequences into their Old Spanish outcomes [ʎ], [ɟ] y [ɲtʃ]. To this end, experimental, dialectal and comparative data from Old Spanish as well as from other Romance languages will be used. This will lead to the conclusion that the sound changes in both [Clabial + l] and [Clabial + j] clusters were based on the same articulatory mechanisms: a strengthening of the segment following the labial consonant and the later deletion of the labial, if it was a stop, or its assimilation to the point of articulation of the palatal, if it was a nasal. The implications of these conclusions for the evolution of pl and fl clusters in Old Spanish, as well as for the methodology in historical phonetics, will be pointed out.