s > r (Iberian)

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
"Alan R. King" <mccay at redestb.es> wrote:
 
>the intervocalic
>s > z development, general in Romance (all? most?), was later reversed in
>Castilian and Galician, as opposed to most other Romance languages.
 
It's hard to see -s- > -z- separate from -p-, -t-, -k- > -b-, -d-,
-g-, which must mean that the change was general in most Western
Romance, but did not occur in Eastern Romance (S. Italian and
Romanian).
 
The exceptions in Western Romance are Mozarabic (partially, and as
far as this can be determined) and Aragonese, or at least part of it.
In High Aragon we see cases of maintained intervocalic -p-, -t- and
-k-.  Intervocalic -s- is /s/ now of course, but I wonder whether we
have to assume a phase with /z/ for those Aragonese dialects that
conserve -p-, -t- and -k-.
 
The Ribargorc,a dialect of Catalan, adjacent to the Aragonese area,
has intervocalic /s/, but it may be safely assumed that this is a
recent phenomenon.  Ribagorc,a` does not maintain intervocalic -p-,
-t- and -k-, and there's even some evidence for rhotacism (-z- > -r-)
in toponyms of the Pyrinean area (Glosianes > Glorianes).  The
standard language also has CERESIA > cirera "cherry", an admittedly
isolated case of pure intervocalic rhotacism that hadn't been
mentioned yet.
 
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam