Consonant Change in Cognates Shared by Indonesian and Palembang Malay

This article describes the phenomena of sound changes, i.e., changes of single segmental sound of consonants, found in cognates shared by Indonesian and Palembang Malay. A list containing 2,535 cognates shared by Indonesian and Palembang Malay becomes the corpus. Since Indonesian is a modern language derived from Standard Malay, it becomes the reference language in the efforts of descriptions. Consonant strengthening, fortition, consonant weakening, lenition, and glottalization become the phenomena found in the consonant changes. Various syllabic structures in which the consonants distributed are also described. The differences of productivity of certain consonant-changes compared to others are found. The productivity shows that, compared to Indonesian, the occurrences of weaker consonants lenis consonants are more productive in Palembang Malay. AbstrakArtikel ini membahas gejala penggantian bunyi, yakni penggantian bunyi-segmental konsonan tunggal, yang didapati dalam kognat atau kata seasal yang dimiliki bersama oleh bahasa Indonesia dan bahasa Melayu Palembang. Sebuah daftar yang memuat 2.535 kognat dalam bahasa Indonesia dan bahasa Melayu Palembang menjadi korpus. Karena merupakan bahasa modern yang terderivasi dari bahasa Melayu Baku, bahasa Indonesia menjadi bahasa acuan dalam pembahasan. Penguatan konsonan, fortisi, pelemahan konsonan, lenisi, dan glotalisasi menjadi gejala yang didapati dalam penggantian konsonan. Struktur suku kata yang di dalamnya konsonan tersebut di atas terdistribusi juga dibahas. Didapati perbedaan produktivitas gejala penggantian konsonan tertentu dibandingkan dengan gejala yang lain. Produktivitas itu menunjukkan bahwa jika dibandingkan dengan bahasa Indonesia, kehadiran konsonan lemah atau konsonan lenis lebih produktif dalam bahasa Melayu Palembang.

On covariation between nasal consonant weakening and anticipatory vowel nasalization: Evidence from a Caribbean and a non-Caribbean dialect of Spanish

In this study, I examine co-variation between the word-final nasal consonant and anticipatory vowel nasalization in two dialects of Spanish. In Caribbean dialects of Spanish, nasalization has been proposed as allophonic (an intended feature of the vowel) but elsewhere it is presumably coarticulatory (a marker of nasal consonant weakening). I argue that, when differences in the phonological interpretation of nasalization are factored in, the temporal extent of nasalization cannot be exclusively attributed to weakening of the nasal consonant. Twenty-eight speakers from Santo Domingo (Dominican Republic) and twenty-six from Buenos Aires (Argentina) were recorded with a nasometer. Findings revealed that when the feature for nasality is phonologized in the representation of the vowel (Santo Domingo Spanish), earlier onset of nasalization can (and does) obtain with little (and arguably even without) weakening of the nasal. By analyzing nasal consonant weakening concurrently with anticipatory vowel nasalization, this study bridges the gap between the aforementioned sources of variation in nasalization.

Consonant weakening in Florentine Italian: A cross-disciplinary approach to gradient and variable sound change

ABSTRACTFew acoustic studies of the intervocalic consonant lenition in central Italian dialects (a process known as Gorgia Toscana) have been undertaken. This study examines speech data from Florentine Italian in order to describe the process of Gorgia Toscana quantitatively and to assess the roles of physiological, perceptual, phonological, and social factors in the process. Results of acoustic and statistical analysis indicate gradient and variable output, with certain patterns occurring in the variation. The observations that emerge from the data cannot all be accounted for if Gorgia Toscana is characterized as a purely phonetic, phonological, or socially driven process of sound change. Rather, different aspects of the process are attributed to different motivators: gradience and velar preference to articulator movements, resistance of nonvelar lenition to perceptual constraints, targeting of a natural class and categorical weakening to abstract featural representations, and intersubject variation in velar lenition to external social factors.