s > r (Romance)

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
"Alan R. King" <mccay at redestb.es> wrote:
 
>In Standard Italian intervocalic stops are (mostly) not voiced, but -s- >
>-z- has taken place.  I would have guessed (from my position of overall
>ignorance about the Italian dialects) that this probably also reflected
>roughly the situation in dialectal Italian south of the Spezia-Rimini line
>(north of the line, -s- is also voiced, of course, but so are the stops).
 
It's not that simple.  Standard Italian has plenty of cases of voiced
stops (Rohlfs gives: ago, drago, lago, sugo, spiga, briga, segale,
luogo, lattuga, aguzzo, pagare, segare, pregare, sfogare, affogare,
fregare, annegare, frugare, intrigare; spada, strada, malgrado,
contrada, rugiada, contado, scudo, lido, padella, badia, badessa,
badile, gradire, scodella, gridare, medaglia, stadera, mortadella,
podesta`, budello, mudare, podere; povero, vescovo, arrivare,
ricevere, cavezza, ricoverare, rimproverare, sceverare, scovolo).
As to -s-, it is pronouned voiceless /s/ in asino, cosa, casa, mese,
fuso, peso, naso, the suffixes -oso, -ese (except cortese, francese,
marchese, palese, paese), the verbal endings -esi, -isi, -osi, -usi,
-eso, -iso, -uso.  Voiced /z/ is found in: base, battesimo, bisogno,
caso, chiesa, crisi, cristianesimo, deserto, dose, fantasia, fase,
fisica, lasagna, lesina, medesimo, misero, musica, osare, pausa,
posa, paradiso, rosa, quaresima, quasi, spasimre, sposo, scusare,
te`si, uso, usare, vaso, ventesimo, viso (from <x>: esame, esatto,
esempio, esemplare, esiguo, esigere, esercito, esente, eseredare).
 
According to Rohlfs, the cases of /v/, /d/, /g/ and /z/ (listed in
approxiamte order of frequency) are not native Tuscan forms, but
words imported from the north.
 
What *is* native Tuscan is the development -k- > -h- ("gorgia
toscana"), and also (in a smaller area) -t- > -T- and -p- > -P-.  As
in the Goidelic lenitions, this also occurs across word boundaries.
To the south of Tuscany, an equally "sandhinista" area is Lazio (as
well as Corsica and Sardinia), but this time the parallel is with
Brythonic (-p- > -b- [here we can distinguish between Northern
imports and local lenitions], -t- > -d-, -k- > -g-).  Apparently -s-
participates in Corsica (/u zale/ "the salt"), but I'm not sure about
Lazio.  There is no "aspiration" of /s/ in Tuscany, whatever that
might mean.  So these *are* counterexamples.
 
However, the Eastern Romance non-lenition (south of La Spezia-Rimini)
applies both to the stops and to -s-.  Of course the imbalance in the
system (3/4-way for the stops /d/, [/dd/,] /t/, /tt/, 2-way for the
sibilant /s/, /ss/) may have favoured the influx of northern words
containing /z/.
 
 
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam