The vowel systems of Central Catalan and Spanish

While the present section does not tackle the issue of dialectal division of Catalan in two major blocks (Eastern, Western Catalan), a brief discussion on such a division is deemed to be necessary,

11 Stage 1. In Felanitxer, /ε/ moves towards /e/ and triggers loss of the contrast between these two mid-vowel phonemes; on that account alone, the upshot of the neutralisation process is that mergers by approximation, and most likely near-mergers as authors suggest, have been created. In Gironí, /o/ and /ↄ/ approach one another; their mutual move towards one another induces neutralisation which leads to near-mergers by approximation mutually ocurred.

Stage 2. It seems as though the mid-back vowel pair i.e. /o-ↄ/ of Rossellonès, whose contrast no longer exists, has steered towards neutralisation the mid-front /e-ε/ vowel contrast. Hence, it may be argued that a progressive neutralisation process takes place, through which /E/ subsquently emerges.

28

prior to the description of the four-height vowel system of Central Catalan along with the three-height vowel system of Spanish.

In 1861, Manuel Milà I Fontanals split Catalan into the Eastern and Western dialectal blocks under the criteria of phonology and morphology. Differences between Eastern and Western dialects lie at pronunciation and morphology that poses enduring questions about the conditions under which vowels are centralised. The Eastern Catalan language cluster includes the Central Catalan variety, which is a specific form of the Eastern Catalan block. Central Catalan is commonly spoken in the province of Barcelona, the eastern half of Tarragona province and, in the entire province of Girona.

It has been noted that vowel reduction in unstressed syllables does not take place homogenously across the Eastern Catalan dialectal group. Based on the Central Catalan vowel reduction rule referenced in Gramàtica del català contemporani (Mascaró 2002: 92-93), it can be seen that /a/, /e/ and /ε/ produced in stressed position reduce to [ə] in unstressed syllables, while /o/ and /ↄ/

reduce to [u]. The following distribution of vowel phonetic realisations in stressed and unstressed syllables provided by Mascaró (2002: 96) is of central importance in understanding the relationship between the stressed Central Catalan vowel system and the unstressed one.

Fig. 1 Overall distribution of vowel phonetic realisations in Central Catalan

Stressed vowel system Unstressed vowel system i → i

e →

ε → ə a →

ↄ →

o → u u →

This seven-member inventory of vowel contrasts is not the maximal that can be found in stressed syllables of the Eastern Catalan block. In terms of phoneme inventory size, the Balearic variety of

29

Eastern Catalan, has eight (8) vowels in stressed syllables. The schwa (/ə/) is broadly present in Balearic Catalan in both stressed and unstressed syllables.¹²

Let us now consider the four-height vowel system of Central Catalan. Figure 2a depicts a system in which the close-mid-front /e/ in tandem with the open-mid-front /ε/ constitute a contrastive vowel pair in stressed syllables. Similarly, a minimal vowel contrast is retained between the close-mid-back /o/ and the open-close-mid-back /ↄ/ vowels. In unstressed position, on the other hand, the reduction rules referred to above result into a three-vowel susbystem with schwa and two high vowels (see Figure 2b).

Fig. 2(a) Four-height stressed vowel system of Central Catalan

height 4: i u

height 3: e o height 2: ε ↄ

height 1: a

Fig. 2(b) Two-height unstressed vowel system of Central Catalan

height 2: i u

height 1: ə

In Spanish, there are no minimal mid-vowel contrasts to show since its system presents a single degree of aperture for the mid-front and mid-back vowels. A couple of mid-vowels (/e/-/o/) shares the second height degree while the third height position is occupied by another vowel pair, that of high-vowels (/i/-/u/). By way of contrast, the first height degree is solely occupied by /a/. Figure 3 below illustrates the three-height vowel system of Spanish.

12 The stressed vowel /ə/ is absent from the speech production of several Majorcan citizens. People who live in Sóller as well as in the geographical locations of Alaró, Lloseta, Binissalem, and Porreres do not produce the schwa sound in stressed syllables (See Mascaró 2002: 104).

30

Fig. 3 The three-height vowel system of Spanish

height 3: i u

height 2: e o height 1: a

In terms of size, Spanish has a five-member vowel inventory, whose number is inalterable in unstressed syllables. Spanish does not have the kind of vowel reduction that Central Catalan has.

In spite of identifying a total of five vowel phonemes in Spanish that occurs in both stressed and unstressed syllables, its vowel system provides fertile ground for allophonic variation.

Let us look at this in more detail by defining first what allophonic variation encompasses.

Allophonic variation is a term designed to describe a set of forms, which realise a phoneme when it occurs in certain phonetic environments. Before discussing any of the variant forms (allophones) a phoneme can realise, it is necessary to consider the sounds that are adjacent to it. Let us stress that Spanish vowel phonemes /i/, /e/, /a/, /o/, /u/ acting as allophones are not simply influenced to some degree by sounds found in the vicinity of them. The Spanish mid-vowel /e/, for example, has a lower [e̞ ] vowel realisation when contacts with /r/ (e.g. guerra [ˈɡe̞ra] ‘war’) but not so when followed by /m, n, t, θ, s/ (e.g. ausencia [auˈsenθja], ‘absence’). Consequently, [e] and [e̞] are in complementary distribution as these two sounds are not opposed to one another. This means that [e] and [e̞] are not found as two distinct sounds in the phonemic vowel inventory of Spanish but are heard as variants of the same vowel (/e/).

At this point, it should be reported that Spanish vowel phonemes alone have received little attention since the most studied aspect of the vowel system of Peninsular Spanish is the acoustic realisation of rising diphthongs (see MacLeod 2007). Even though both Catalan and Spanish include both falling and rising diphthongs, the present study only examines singleton vowel sounds that are treated as distinct from each other in Catalan. Furthermore, my discussion of language contact and ensuing borrowing from Spanish to Catalan explores from a qualitative viewpoint the behaviour of vowel phonemes and not allophones of the language(s) involved.

31