s > z (etc.) (Italy, Spain)

[Miguel Carrasquer Vidal]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
Tom Cravens wrote:
 
>Comments below (Tom Cravens)
 
>(Note: I [TC] mistakenly sent this directly to Miguel, rather than the list.
>Perhaps the discussion of weakening by class is of some general interest.)
 
And this is how I replied, and what Tom replied to my replies while
we were sorting out where the message should have gone...  I trust
it's allright with Tom to compress things this way, as his final
reply to me (though private in principle) does not contain
information more sensitive than that he attended to a party in
Perugia in his student days (who hasn't?), and does contain a couple
of useful references of general interest.
 
 
[TC:]
>>Unless I'm mistaken (I don't have the volume at hand), Rohlfs is talking
>>about Tuscan in that passage, not Standard Italian.
 
[mcv:]
>For v, d, g he's talking about "la lingua nazionale" (and then
>separately about Toscana, N, C and S).  For s, he starts discussing
>Tuscan right away.  Since the written language does not distinguish
>/VsV/ from /VzV/, both written <VsV>, in a sense there is no
>"standard" pronunciation.
 
[TC:]
Well, there is, sort of. At least prescriptivists try to enforce it
(more or less vainly). But you're right, it's certainly not
consistent. A striking anecdotal-but-real indication that (some)
speakers don't worry about it, though: many years ago while a student
in Perugia, I was at a party where there was a young woman addressed
by some as Lui[s]a, others as Lui[z]a. My Italian was very elementary
at the time, but I had a good ear, so I finally asked her if her name
was Lui[s]a or Lui[z]a. The answer was the classic Italian "E` lo
stesso."
 
[mcv:]
>At least the spelling doesn't enforce any,
>like it does in the case of the stops, so there's logic in that.
 
[TC:]
Right.
 
[mcv:]
>>>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.
 
[TC:]
>>Yes, Rohlfs says so, but this bit isn't that simple, either.
 
[mcv:]
>I thought as much.  I didn't stop to re-read the whole chapter called
>"Ricapitolazione critica dello sviluppo de -k-, -p-, -t-, -s- in
>Toscana", but I noted a touch of controversy.  Usually happens when
>things are not that simple.
 
[TC:]
Yes, Rohlfs and a few others were once pitted against Merlo and very
few others, in trying to enforce a strict Neogrammarian all-or-none
interpretation. The effects linger, with the Rohlfs school having
gained the upper hand. But a detailed investigation suggests that
something is very much awry. Martin Maiden has a nice, if very brief,
treatment in his Linguistic history of Italian, and Luciano Giannelli
and I address this rather superficially in Maiden and Parry (eds).
1997. The dialects of Italy. Routledge.
 
[TC:]
>[Alto Aragones geminate /nn/, /ll/...]
 
[mcv:]
Interesting.  I had completely overlooked that (it is mentioned,
although very briefly, in my copy of "Dialectologma espaqola" by
Alonso Zamora Vicente).
 
[and I have nothing further to add at this time]
 
 
=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl
Amsterdam