Supplementary material to "The relationship between the coarticulatory source and effect in sound change: evidence from Italo-Romance" (Laboratory Phonology, doi: 10.16995/labphon.9228)

In ongoing sound changes, a coarticulatory effect is often enhanced as the coarticulatory source that gives rise to it wanes. But quite how phonologisation and these reciprocal coarticulatory changes are connected is still poorly understood. The present study addresses this issue through an acoustic analysis of metaphony, which like umlaut has its phonetic origins in VCV coarticulation, and which was analysed in three geographically proximal varieties spoken in the so-called Lausberg area in Southern Italy. The corpus was of 35 speakers producing mostly disyllabic words with phonetically mid stem vowels and suffix vowels that varied in phonetic height. The results of functional principal components analysis applied to the stem vowels’ first two formant frequencies showed a progressively greater enhancement to the vowel stem across the three regions that was characterised by raising, diphthongisation, and then further raising and monophthongisation. Suffix erosion was quantified by counting deletions and the degree of vowel centralisation. The analysis showed a reciprocal relationship between stem enhancement and suffix erosion across, but not within, the three dialects. Overall, the results suggest that a trade-off of cues between suffix and stem vowel has progressed to different degrees between the three varieties.在持续的语音演变中，协同发音效应（coarticulatory effect）往往会随着其产生的协同发音源（coarticulatory source）的减弱而增强。但目前学界对音位化（phonologisation）与这类双向协同发音变化之间的关联机制仍知之甚少。本研究通过对元音变移（metaphony）的声学分析探讨这一问题：该现象与元音变音（umlaut）一样，其语音起源均为VCV协同发音，本研究针对意大利南部所谓劳茨贝格地区（Lausberg area）内三种地理邻近的方言变体展开分析。本研究的语料库包含35名发音者，其发音的词汇多为双音节词，词干元音为语音学上的中元音，后缀元音的语音学舌位高度存在差异。对词干元音前两个共振峰频率（formant frequencies）开展的功能主成分分析（functional principal components analysis）结果显示，三个区域的词干元音强化程度依次递增，其表现为元音舌位升高（raising）、双元音化（diphthongisation），随后进一步舌位升高且单元音化（monophthongisation）。后缀弱化（suffix erosion）通过统计删除次数与元音央化（vowel centralisation）程度进行量化。分析结果表明，三个方言之间存在词干元音强化与后缀弱化的双向关联（reciprocal relationship），但方言内部并未呈现该关联。总体而言，研究结果显示，后缀与词干元音间的线索权衡（trade-off of cues）在三种方言变体中的发展程度各不相同。