32.1774, Review: Romance; Historical Linguistics; Phonetics; Phonology: Zampaulo (2019)

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Subject: 32.1774, Review: Romance; Historical Linguistics; Phonetics; Phonology: Zampaulo (2019)

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Date: Thu, 20 May 2021 15:36:08
From: Ionuț Geană [ionut.geana at litere.unibuc.ro]
Subject: Palatal Sound Change in the Romance Languages

 
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Book announced at http://linguistlist.org/issues/30/30-4677.html

AUTHOR: Andre  Zampaulo
TITLE: Palatal Sound Change in the Romance Languages
SUBTITLE: Synchronic and Diachronic Perspectives
SERIES TITLE: Oxford Studies in Diachronic and Historical Linguistics
PUBLISHER: Oxford University Press
YEAR: 2019

REVIEWER: Ionuț Geană, University of Bucharest

SUMMARY

André Zampaulo’s “Palatal sound change in the Romance languages. Diachronic
and synchronic perspectives” investigates the evolution of palatal changes in
Romance diachronically, while also providing useful data in the synchronic
variation of this phenomenon. As suggested from the title, this monograph
focuses mainly on phonetics, namely the particular case of palatals, while
also bringing various phonological explanations and data. After
Acknowledgements, the author provides an extensive and useful List of
abbreviations, also including geographical information in the case of
languages and dialects, e.g., “Lecc. Leccese (southern Salentino dialect of
Lecce, extreme southeast Italy)” (p. xii). Seven chapters of unequal size are
followed by Appendices, References and Index.

Chapter 1, “Introduction”, starts with the description of the six major groups
of Romance languages that will form the focus of Zampaulo’s research: Eastern
Romance (Romanian, Dalmatian – now extinct), Rhaeto-Romance (Friulian, Ladin,
Romansh), Italo-Romance (Italian, Tuscan, Corsican, alongside northern,
central and southern Italian dialects), Sardinian, Gallo-Romance (French,
Occitan, Francoprovençal), and Ibero-Romance (Catalan, Navarro-Aragonese,
Astur-Leonese, Galician, Portuguese, Spanish) (p. 1). It is worth mentioning
at this point that the author does not exclude the existence of other Romance
languages and varieties (while also mentioning a few), but his synchronic and
diachronic data analyses will go in the direction of the six major groups
identified. The Romance “palatals” are introduced in subsection 1.2 using the
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) system, alongside a series of
conventions and adaptations to best serve the purposes of the monograph. Of
the 20 palatals identified in Table 1.1 (p. 2), only the yod (the palatal
approximant [j]) had already appeared in Latin. On p. 5, André Zampaulo puts
forth four research questions to guide the reader through the book, focusing
on: the Latin sources and diachronic evolution of Romance palatals, different
diachronic evolution leading to similar synchronic outcomes, the effect of
phonetic and phonological information on the evolution of Romance palatals,
and the integration of phonetic motivation in  phonological analysis. The last
subsection of the Introduction presents the book outline.

Chapter 2, “Theoretical considerations”, is self-explanatory. After a brief
history of the attention given by scholars to phonetic change (going as back
as 4th century BC), the author provides a list of canonical authors in the
field of phonetics and phonology, in general, as well as in the specific field
of Romance languages. Judging from the list of names and works, at this stage
it appears that Zampaulo based most of his research on available literature
published primarily in English. However, the theoretical background would have
been significantly improved if additional references for Romanian had been in
place, other than Maiden (2016), albeit highly valuable and up to date, as
prior research is at this introductory point ignored (e.g., Chitoran (2002) or
Steriade (2008), among others). Expanding on the concept of sound change, the
author sets the framework of his research to Optimality Theory (OT), à la
Prince and Smolensky (2004 [1993]) and talks about the role in sound change of
the speaker and the listener that becomes the speaker, following Ohala (2003).
The speaker and the listener-turned-speaker distinction is formally the
representation of the approach to sound change in this monograph: “a sound
change may spread through the lexicon and the speech community until it is
incorporated into the sound inventory of all language users” (p. 29).

Chapter 3, “The phonetics of palatals”, introduces the articulatory and
acoustic characteristics of palatals. Based on all experimental work carried
out, the articulation of these sounds is intrinsically complex. In this
chapter, Zampaulo describes the palatal vowels [i e ɛ] and the glide [j],
alongside the palatal sonorants and palatal obstruents. These phonetic
characteristics are used to support the goals of the study, accounting for
their realizations in Romance from both synchronic, and diachronic
perspectives. The author reiterates in this chapter that it is not phonetics
itself that triggers change, as sound production is intrinsically related to
phonetic variation. Rather, it is the interplay between the speaker and the
listener-turned-speaker that best explains the initiation of sound change (p.
45).

The effects of the palatal glide [j] (yod) and the influence of palatal vowels
over Latin sonorant and obstruent consonants are key in understanding the
emergence of palatals across Romance and are the subject of Chapter 4,
“Palatals in the history of the Romance languages”, with thorough theoretical
assumptions and careful analyses of: the emergence of Latin yod, the emergence
of the palatal lateral [ʎ], the emergence of the palatal nasal [ɲ], and the
emergence of palatal obstruents. Data are brought from an abundance of Romance
languages and varieties. On p. 63, Zampaulo provides the different
evolutionary results of Latin [pl- kl- fl-] in the Romance-speaking world.
Although the author does mention that the list is not exhaustive, the data
from Eastern Romance is again scarce, providing only the situation from
(standard) Daco-Romanian (the author uses “Romanian”, but I chose to write
Daco-Romanian, to oppose it to Aromanian, Megleno-Romanian and
Istro-Romanian). Nevertheless, the whole analysis would benefit if the other
Eastern Romance varieties, such as Aromanian or Istro-Romanian, had been
further researched, where the evolution of Latin [kl-] resulted in an
intermediate stage [klj-], for example Lat. “clamare” > Arom. [klje'ma]; in
Istro-Rom. [klje'må] alternates with [kle'må] and also [ce'ma] (see more
examples and discussion in Saramandu (1984: 428-33) for Aromanian, and Kovačec
(1984: 554-8) for Istro-Romanian, both in Rusu (ed.) 1984). In the concluding
remarks to this chapter, on p. 97-8 the author reconstructs the main
evolutionary patterns of palatals from Latin to Romance.

Zampaulo switches from diachrony to synchrony in Chapter 5, “Palatals in the
Romance languages today”, with the goal of setting an inventory of palatals in
the family of Romance languages. While being aware of this tremendous
undertaking, the author looks at synchronic dialectal data (both readily
available, as well as unpublished material) from Ibero-Romance, Gallo-Romance,
Italo-Romance and Sardinian, as well as Rhaeto-Romance and Eastern Romance,
with the largest portion of this chapter dedicated to Ibero-Romance (roughly
forty-five pages, against two-three pages for the each of the other
varieties), with relevant graphs, spectrograms, tables, maps, and charts.
Eastern Romance (Dalmatian and Daco-Romanian) data is unfortunately given a
seven-line treatment. Although an equal treatment of all sub-Romance varieties
(added by compare and contrast analyses) would have added significant value to
this monograph, this may provide the grounds of new topics for further
research (either by the author, or by other linguists) and does not diminish
the tremendous effort into researching Ibero-Romance. The authors rightfully
stresses in the conclusions to this chapter that synchronic data can explain
diachronic data and vice versa.

The goal of Chapter 6, “Palatal sound change in the Romance languages: a
unified account”, is to propose an evolutionary formal portrait, by
formalizing changes as resulting from both documented, and reconstructed
pathways. Adopting the speaker-listener interaction and the constraint-based
model, Zampaulo proposes an integrated account of how and why these sound
changes could emerge, also revealing the mechanisms that may lead to the
possible reoccurrence of similar change events: [ʎ]-delateralization,
[j]-fortition, [t d]-palatalization, [tʃ dʒ]-deaffrication, [dʒ ʒ]-devoicing,
etc. (p. 150). The author dedicates subchapters to sound change as constraint
reranking, pathways for the emergence and evolution of palatal sonorants and
obstruents, showing how similar palatal change events have taken place in
different Romance varieties in the passage from Latin to Romance and/or in the
evolution of the same variety. The unified account in the study of palatal
variation is achieved by bringing diachrony and synchrony together.

Chapter 7, “Final remarks”, Zampaulo restates the theoretical background that
shapes his analysis of Romance palatals, summarizing the chapters of his
monograph, while also providing invitations to further research (open
questions) on the nature of the constraints used throughout his analysis,
among others. The Appendices section includes demographic questions (Appendix
1), sentence-reading task (Appendix 2), and knowledge of potential minimal
pairs (Appendix 3), followed by References and Index.

EVALUATION

André Zampaulo’s “Palatal sound change in the Romance languages. Diachronic
and synchronic perspectives” (part of the series Oxford studies in diachronic
and historical linguistics, general editors: Adam Ledgeway and Ian Roberts) is
a state-of-the-art, theoretically sound well-written monograph. It treats a
topic that has set the grounds for hot debates among linguists of various
theoretical orientations. The historical and contemporary treatment of
palatals in Romance is an endeavor that André Zampaulo successfully
accomplishes, using mostly phonetics and phonology tools. The amount of data
that the author uses to build his analysis upon is phenomenal, which is
understandable given the number of Romance varieties (languages, dialects,
subdialects, idiolects, etc.), all well-represented in the literature.
Considering its high degree of detailing and formalization, this monograph is
useful for linguists and graduate students with a solid background in
generative linguistics, alongside descriptive Romance linguistics, in
particular Romance phonetics and phonology.

The graphics used in this monograph are exceptional, being easy to read and
follow, as well as move through chapters (despite some minor typos, for
example on p. 98, “relying on .the results”, where the full stop is
superfluous). The chapter dedicated to Conclusions could have been extended to
include, beside the topics and questions for further research, the
shortcomings and difficulties of the analysis put forth by the author. For
example, as stated in my brief description of each chapter above, the data
from Eastern/Balkan/Daco-Romance is heavily underrepresented, and the author
does not provide the reader with explanations as to why this is the case;
indeed, this drawback could be easily overcome by looking at data available
since the end of the 19th century, see, for instance, Weigand (1888/2010), as
well as more recent work, as Rusu (ed.) (1984) or Chițoran (2002). Other than
this, the bibliography is consistent and up to date, and properly cited
throughout the book. 

To sum up, André Zampaulo’s “Palatal sound change in the Romance languages.
Diachronic and synchronic perspectives” is a state-of-the art monograph on the
treatment of the palatals in Romance. Based on all of the above, this book is
highly useful to phoneticians and phonologists, in general, and to linguists
trained and/or specializing in Romance phonetics and phonology, in particular.

REFERENCES

Chitoran, Ioana. 2002. The phonology and morphology of Romanian
diphthongization. Probus 14. De Gruyter. 205—46.

Kovačec, August. 1984. Istroromâna. In Valeriu Rusu (ed.). Tratat de
dialectologie românească. Craiova: Scrisul Românesc. 550—91.

Rusu, Valeriu (ed.). 1984. Tratat de dialectologie românească. Craiova:
Scrisul Românesc.

Saramandu, Nicolae. 1984. Aromâna. In Valeriu Rusu (ed.). Tratat de
dialectologie românească. Craiova: Scrisul Românesc. 423—550.

Steriade, Donca. 2008. A pseudo-cyclic effect in Romanian morphophonology. In
Asaf Bachrach & Andrew Nevins (eds.). Inflectional Identity. Oxford: Oxford
University Press. 313—59.

Weigand, Gustav. 1888/2010. Die Sprache Der Olympo-Walachen: Nebst Einer
Einleitung Uber Land Und Leute. Kessinger Publishing, LLC.


ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Dr. Ionuț Geană is an Associate Professor at the University of Bucharest and
also a researcher of the Department of Grammar at the Romanian Academy's
Institute of Linguistics in Bucharest. He is currently visiting faculty at
Arizona State University (until July 2021). His research interests include the
morphosyntax of Eastern Romance (with focus on Istro-Romanian and
Daco-Romanian varieties), Romanian phonetics and phonology, and teaching
Romanian as a foreign language.





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