s > r (Iberian)

[Alan R. King]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Benji Wald wrote:
 
>In passing, I noticed Alan King acknowledge a correction by Miguel
>Carrasquer.  Alan wrote:
>
>>Yes, a slip.  I guess I was thinking of intervocalic s > z, and the fact
>>that besides Castilian, both Galician and Romanian are also exempt from
>>this general Romance development.  In Castilian and Galician (but NOT in
>>Romanian, as you point out), there is no /z/ phoneme.  I was confusing
>>these two things.
>
>I am curious about this situation because I have long had the impression
>that what is historically distinctive of Castillian and the Spanish-area
>around it, but not extending to Portuguese, Catalan or other adjacent
>Romance languages is the *devoicing* of voiced fricatives, /z/ > /s/ among
>them.  That is, I never thought that the ancestor of Castiliian, Spanish,
>whatever, was exempt from the EARLIER Romance process of intervocalic
>voicing of Latin -s- (among other sounds), but that by LATER developments
>it devoiced the resulting -z- (in most environments -- in general,in
>effect).
 
Oh dear, I put my foot in it again.  Apologies.  I didn't really mean to
say that, I can't even imagine how it happened.  Must have been in a hurry.
 Of course I am wrong again, and you're right to pull me up on it.  What I
should have said (see if I get it right this time) is that the intervocalic
s > z development, general in Romance (all? most?), was later reversed in
Castilian and Galician, as opposed to most other Romance languages.  In
modern Castilian and Galician there is no /z/ phoneme.  In most other
Romance languages there IS such a phoneme, AND it comes from intervocalic
/s/ in Latin.  I know of one other modern Romance language which,
synchronically, does not have /z/ deriving, historically, from Latin
intervocalic /s/.  As pointed out, Romanian (unlike Castilian and Galician)
DOES have a /z/ phoneme, but from different historical sources than the
/z/'s in the other Romance languages we're talking about.  Whew! I hope
that's better.
 
So thanks for the correction.  But what I was (we were) talking about, with
regard to which this was a mere tangential point, was this (this is a
reiteration of what I've already said, or tried to):
 
(1) I believe that all languages in the Iberian peninsula, in their present
(synchronic) forms, voice /s/ before voiced consonants in those cases
(varieties) where the sibilant is not subject to some more radical
transformation (rhotacism, aspiration, loss...).  Even peninsular Basque,
for what it's worth.
 
(2) As regards the (synchronic) structural consequences of this voicing, we
must differentiate between:
 
a.  languages which possess a /z/ PHONEME (and also a /s/ phoneme, of
course); here we can talk about neutralization in the context in question.
 
b.  languages which LACK (synchronically, of course) a /z/ PHONEME; here we
can only talk about conditioned allophones of /s/.
 
Within the Iberian Peninsula, the languages in the a. group are Catalan and
Portuguese.  Those in the b. group are Castilian, Galician and peninsular
Basque.  Some varieties of Castilian (and also of Galician) are exempt from
this classification because they do other things with their sibilants, such
as aspirate them or drop them.  And some dialects of Galician, and of
Castilian (I thought and still think), rhotacize in the
pre-voiced-consonant position.  (I can provide documentation for this for
Galician, and actually already have done so; for Castilian, which I have
not investigated systematically, it is merely an impression, and I stand to
be corrected if need be!)  I say nothing about other Iberian languages or
dialects, such as Asturian, owing merely to ignorance, but the
corresponding information is most welcome.
 
I wonder what I mangled this time?!
 
In humility,
Alan