Re: Status of Italian rising

I don't know Spanish enough to state anything about it. In Italian, though,
this is what happened to the once allophonic alternations [O]/[wO] and [E]/[jE]:
some verbs or derivates retained it, some others didn't (with analogy going
on as in _suonare_ instead of the previous _sonare_). The alternation was
generally kept in verbs which already showed irregularities (as in _potere_,
whose 3rd sg form remained _può_ [pwO], and wasn't changed into *pò [pO]).

Beware we have _sonoro_ [so'nOro], where the first [o] was not changed into
[wo] because of analogy with _suono_ [swOno]- the word is independent enough
from the verb not to allow such a process.

Luca



>-- Messaggio originale --
>Date:         Tue, 10 Dec 2002 02:37:01 -0800
>Reply-To: Constructed Languages List <CONLANG@...>
>From: Joseph Fatula <fatula3@...>
>Subject:      Re: Status of Italian rising
>To: CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU
>
>
>> Also see that the condition "in
>> open _stressed_ syllables" is not valid anymore: until the first half
of
>> this century grammars recomended to shift _uo_ to _o_ when it happened
>to
>> lose stress: _suono_ ['swOno] "I play", but _sonare_ [so'nare]. Everybody
>> says [swo'nare], nowadays, thou'.
>
>This is very interesting.  The Latin stressed vowel > diphthong rule that
>happened in Spanish and Italian (&c.) is certainly active in Spanish.
Cf.
>pensár, piénso, pensámos.  (to think, I think, we think, accents added
to
>make stress obvious)