s > r (Iberian)

[Alan R. King]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
 
>The phenomenon does extend to "apitxat" Valencian Catalan, i.e. the
>central Valencian dialects of Valencia city and province (not N and S
>Valencian of Castello' and Alacant provinces).
 
I'm glad you have introduced some information about "apitxat".  As it
happens, my companion is a speaker of apitxat, but a non-native one (she is
Basque but grew up in the city of Valencia), and she never gives me
clearcut data because she is insufficiently confident in her competence in
it, and I don't know any other apitxat speakers!!!  Also, I get the idea
there is some sort of stigma attached to apitxat speech within Catalan,
which could be producing unwanted interference.  So anyway, we add one
dialect of Catalan to the list of varieties without /z/ in the peninsula
(the others being the whole of Castilian and (virtually) all of Galician).
(And Asturian?)
 
Now: are there any interesting sibilant-transforming phenomena in apitxat,
I wonder?
 
(1) Does /s/ voice before voiced consonants?  (In Castilian and Galician
this is the only context in which we find [z].  My money is on the same
thing happening in apitxat.)
 
(2) Does /s/ rhotacize?  Does it aspirate?  Does it drop?  (I'm guessing no
to all three...)
 
In fact, the only phenomenon of this type that I have heard of anywhere in
Catalan is rhotacism in varieties of Mallorcan (as pointed out by
Carrasquer earlier).
 
 
Alan R. King, Ph.D.
alanking at bigfoot.com
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