User:Melroch/Vulgar Latin: Difference between revisions
(→Vowels: There was only one length distinction, applicable to all vowels, which was replaced by several distinctions of quality, It's not a question of grammar, but of semantics.) |
(→Vowels) |
||
Line 48: | Line 48: | ||
|- | |- | ||
! style="text-align: right;" | 4) | ! style="text-align: right;" | 4) | ||
! style="text-align: left;" | Corsican V.L. | ! style="text-align: left;" | Corsican V.L.{{ref|Corsican}} | ||
| i | | i | ||
| ɛ | | ɛ |
Revision as of 01:56, 5 April 2008
I began a phonology, but it seems my sources were too contradictory, and old, so that they didn't distinguish sufficiently between phonological, morphological and analogical changes, or at least had a different idea about them from modern sources. Anyway my first attempt at anything tends to get messy! ☺
Vowels
0) | Latin | ī | ĭ | ē | ĕ | ā | ă | ŏ | ō | ŭ | ū |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
1) | Early V.L. | i | ɪ | e | ɛ | a | ɔ | o | ʊ | u | |
2) | Sard/African[1] V.L. | i | e | a | o | u | |||||
3) | Sicilian V.L. | i | e | a | o | u | |||||
4) | Corsican V.L.[2] | i | ɛ | e | ɛ | a | ɔ | o | ɔ | u | |
5) | Western V.L. | i | e | ɛ | a | ɔ | o | u | |||
6) | Eastern V.L. | i | e | ɛ | a | ɔ | o | u |
All attested Romance vowel systems presuppose an early Vulgar Latin (1) system where the length distinction of the Latin (0) were replaced by distinctions of quality, or by a distinction of tenseness. The exception is the Sard-African system (2) where the length distinction was simply lost.
All of (2, 3, 5, 6) can be derived from (1), although in the case of (2) it is more reasonable to assume that it derives directly from (0) through loss of the length distinction. In the case of (4) it is most likely that it derives from a system parallel to (1) where ĭ had merged with ĕ and ŭ had merged with ŏ before the loss of the length distinction.
References
^ "Afrae aures de correptione vocalium vel productione non iudicant". Augustine De doctrina christiana 4.24