Catalan Phonology

The phonology of Catalan, a Romance language, has a certain degree of dialectal variation. Although there are two standard varieties, one based on Central Eastern dialect and another one based on South-Western or Valencian dialect, this article deals with features of all or most dialects, as well as regional pronunciation differences. Various studies have focused on different Catalan varieties; for example, Wheeler and Mascaró analyze Central Eastern varieties, the former focusing on the educated speech of Barcelona and the latter focusing more on the vernacular of Barcelona, and Recasens does a careful phonetic study of Central Eastern Catalan.

Catalan is characterized by final-obstruent devoicing, lenition, and voicing assimilation; a set of 7 or 8 phonemic vowels, vowel assimilations (including vowel harmony), many phonetic diphthongs, and vowel reduction, whose precise details differ between dialects. Several dialects have a dark ''l'', and all dialects have palatal ''l'' () and ''n'' ().

Consonants

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Phonetic notes:
* , are laminal denti-alveolar , . After , they are laminal alveolar , .
* , are velar but fronted to pre-velar position before front vowels. In some Majorcan dialects, the situation is reversed; the main realization is palatal , , but before liquids and rounded back vowels they are velar , .
* , , are apical front alveolar , , , but the first two are laminal denti-alveolar , before , . In addition, is postalveolar or alveolo-palatal before , , , , velar before , and labiodental before , (), where it merges with . It also merges with (to ) before , .
* , , are apical back alveolar , , , also described as postalveolar.
* , are apical alveolar , .




They may be somewhat fronted, so that the stop component is laminal denti-alveolar, while the fricative component is apical post-dental.
* , are laminal "front alveolo-palatal" , .
* There is some confusion in the literature about the precise phonetic characteristics of , , , and ; while Recasens, Fontdevila & Pallarès and Recasens & Espinosa describe them as "back alveolo-palatal", implying that the characters would be more accurate, they (and all literature on Catalan) use the characters for palato-alveolar affricates and fricatives while using for alveolo-palatal sounds in examples in other languages like Polish or Chinese. Otherwise, sources, like Carbonell & Llisterri generally describe them as "postalveolar".

Obstruents

Voiced obstruents undergo final-obstruent devoicing so that ('cold', m. s.) is pronounced with , while ('cold', f. pl.) is pronounced with .

Stops

Voiced stops become lenited to fricatives or approximants in syllable onsets, after continuants: → , → , → .

*Exceptions include after lateral consonants and after , e.g. (E) / (W) ('oeil-de-boeuf'), (E) / (W) ('excellent ballpoint').
*Additionally, remains unlenited in non-betacist dialects.
*In the coda position, these sounds are always realized as stops; except in many Valencian dialects, where they are lenited.

In Catalan (not in Valencian), and may be geminated in certain environments (e.g. 'village', 'rule').

Affricates

The phonemic status of affricates is dubious; after other consonants, affricates are in free variation with fricatives, e.g. (E) / (W) ('hair parting') and may be analyzed as either single phonemes or clusters of a stop and a fricative.
* Alveolar affricates, and , occur the least of all affricates.
** only occurs intervocalically: (E) / (W) ('toxic substances').
** Instances of arise mostly from compounding; the few lexical instances arise from historical compounding. For instance, (E) / (W) ('maybe') comes from ('may') + ('be' inf). As such, does not occur word-initially; other than some rare words of foreign origin (e.g. 'tsar', 'tsuga'), but it may occur word-finally and quite often in cases of heteromorphemic (i.e. across a morpheme boundary) plural endings: ('everybody').
* The distribution of alveolo-palatal affricates, and , depends on dialect:
**In most of Valencian and southern Catalonia, most occurrences of correspond to the voiced fricative in Standard Eastern Catalan: ('ice').
** In Standard Eastern Catalan, word-initial is found only in a few words of foreign origin (e.g. 'Czech', 'Tchaikovsky') while being found freely intervocalically (e.g. 'arrow') and word-finally: (E) / (W) ('office').
** Standard Eastern Catalan also only allows in intervocalic position (e.g. 'medic', 'enclosed'). Phonemic analyses show word-final occurrences of (e.g. (E) / (W) 'skew ray'), but final devoicing eliminates this from the surface: ('ray').
** In various other dialects (as well as in emphatic speech), occurs word-initially and after another consonant to the exclusion of . These instances of word-initial seem to correspond to in other dialects, including the standard (on which the orthography is based): ('bedbug'), pronounced in the standard, is in these varieties.
There is dialectal variation in regards to affricate length, with long affricates occurring in both Eastern and Western dialects such as in Majorca and few areas in Southern Valencia. Also, intervocalic affricates are predominantly long, especially those that are voiced or occurring immediately after a stressed syllable (e.g. (E) / (W) 'medic'). In modern Valencian and have merged into .

Fricatives

occurs in Balearic, as well as in Alguerese, Standard Valencian and some areas in southern Catalonia. Everywhere else, it has merged with historic so that and occur in complementary distribution.
*In Majorcan, and are in complementary distribution, with occurring before vowels (e.g. 'blue' f. vs. 'blue' m.).
*In other varieties that have both sounds, they are in contrast before vowels, with neutralization in favor of before consonants.

Sonorants

While "dark (velarized) l", , may be a positional allophone of in most dialects (such as in the syllable coda; e.g. 'ground'), is dark irrespective of position in Eastern dialects like Majorcan and standard Eastern Catalan (e.g. ).

The distribution of the two rhotics and closely parallels that of Spanish.
*Between vowels, the two contrast (e.g. (E) / (W) 'myrrh' vs. (E) / (W) 'look'), but they are otherwise in complementary distribution. appears in the onset, except in word-initial position (), after , , and (, , ), and in compounds (''infraroig''), where is used.
*Different dialects vary in regards to rhotics in the coda, with Western Catalan generally featuring and Central Catalan dialects like those of Barcelona or Girona featuring a weakly trilled unless it precedes a vowel-initial word in the same prosodic unit, in which case appears ( in Western Catalan, in Central Catalan).
*There is free variation in word-initially, after , , and , and in compounds (if is preceded by consonant), wherein is pronounced or , the latter being similar to English ''red'': .

In careful speech, , , and may be geminated (e.g. (E) / (W) 'unnecessary'; (E) / (W) 'to store'; 'illusion'). A geminated may also occur (e.g. (E) / (W) 'line'). Wheeler analyzes intervocalic as the result of gemination of a single rhotic phoneme: (E) / (W) 'saw, mountains' (this is similar to the common analysis of Spanish and Portuguese rhotics).

Vowels

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Phonetic notes:
* The vowel is further back and open than the Castilian counterpart in North-Western and Central Catalan, slightly fronted and closed in Valencian and Ribagorçan , and further fronted and closed in Majorcan.
* The open-mid and are lower in Majorcan, Minorcan and Valencian.
* In Alguerese, Northern Catalan and some places bordering the Spanish-speaking areas, open-mid and close-mid vowels may merge into mid vowels; and .
* The close vowels are more open than in Castilian. Unstressed are centralized.
** In Valencian and most Balearic dialects are further open and centralized.
* Northern Catalan sometimes adds two loan rounded vowels, and , from French and Occitan (e.g. 'aim', 'leaves').
* The realization of the reduced vowel varies from mid to near-open , with the latter variant being the most usual in the Barcelona metropolitan area, where the distinction between and is less pronounced than in other varieties that maintain the distinction.
* Phonetic nasalization occurs for vowels occurring between nasal consonants or when preceding a syllable-final nasal; e.g. (E) / (W) ('Sunday').

Stressed vowels

Most varieties of Catalan contrast seven stressed vowel phonemes. However, some Balearic dialects have an additional stressed vowel phoneme (); e.g. ('dry, I sit'). The stressed schwa of these dialects corresponds to in Central Catalan and in Western Catalan varieties (that is, Central and Western Catalan dialects differ in their incidence of and , with appearing more frequently in Western Catalan; e.g. Central Catalan vs. Western Catalan ('dry, I sit')).

Contrasting series of the main Catalan dialects:

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Unstressed vowels

In Eastern Catalan, vowels in unstressed position reduce to three : , , (phonetically in Barcelona); , , ; remains unchanged. However there are some dialectal differences: Alguerese merges , and with ; and in most areas of Majorca, can appear in unstressed position (that is, and are usually reduced to ).

In Western Catalan, vowels in unstressed position reduce to five: , ; , ; remain unchanged. However, in some Western dialects reduced vowels tend to merge into different realizations in some cases:
* Unstressed may merge with before a nasal or sibilant consonant (e.g. 'anvil', 'swarm'), in some environments before any consonant (e.g. 'earthy'), and in monosyllabic clitics. This sounds almost the same as the Barcelonian open schwa . Likewise, unstressed may merge into when in contact with palatal consonants (e.g. 'lord').
* Unstressed may merge with before a bilabial consonant (e.g. 'covered'), before a stressed syllable with a high vowel (e.g. 'rabbit'), in contact with palatal consonants (e.g. 'Joseph'), and in monosyllabic clitics.

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Diphthongs and triphthongs

There are also a number of phonetic diphthongs and triphthongs, all of which begin and/or end in or .

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In Standard Eastern Catalan, rising diphthongs (that is, those starting with or ) are only possible in the following contexts:
* in word-initial position, e.g. () ('yoghurt').
* The semivowel ( or ) occurs between vowels as in ( 'he/she was doing') or ( 'they say').
* In the sequences or plus vowel, e.g. ('glove'), ('quota'), ('question'), ('penguin'); these exceptional cases even lead some scholars to hypothesize the existence of rare labiovelar phonemes and .

Processes

There are certain instances of ''compensatory diphthongization'' in Majorcan so that ('logs') (in addition to deleting the palatal stop) develops a compensating palatal glide and surfaces as (and contrasts with the unpluralized ). Diphthongization compensates for the loss of the palatal stop (segment loss compensation). There are other cases where diphthongization compensates for the loss of point of articulation features (property loss compensation) as in ('year') vs. ('years').

The dialectal distribution of compensatory diphthongization is almost entirely dependent on the dorsal stop () and the extent of consonant assimilation (whether or not it is extended to palatals).

Voiced affricates are devoiced after stressed vowels in dialects like Eastern Catalan where there may be a correlation between devoicing and lengthening (gemination) of voiced affricates: → ('medic'). In Barcelona, voiced stops may be fortified (geminated and devoiced); e.g. 'village').

Assimilations

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Catalan denti-alveolar stops can fully assimilate to the following consonant, producing gemination; this is particularly evident before nasal and lateral consonants: e.g. ('rind'), / ('spring'), and ('week'). Learned words can alternate between featuring and not featuring such assimilation (e.g. 'atlas', (E) / (W) 'to administer').

Central Valencian features simple elision in many of these cases (e.g , ) though learned words don't exhibit either assimilation or elision: and .

Prosody

Stress

Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word (e.g. (E) / (W) 'compass', 'punishment', (E) / (W) 'fool').

Compound words and adverbs formed with may have a syllable with secondary stress (e.g. (E) (W) 'willingly'; (E) (W) 'lightning conductor') but every lexical word has just one syllable with main stress.

Phonotactics

Any consonant, as well as and may be an onset. Clusters may consist of a consonant plus a semivowel (C, C) or an obstruent plus a liquid. Some speakers may have one of these obstruent-plus-liquid clusters preceding a semivowel, e.g. ('watermelon'); for other speakers, this is pronounced (i.e. the semivowel must be syllabic in this context).

Word-medial codas are restricted to one consonant + ( (E) / (W)). In the coda position, voice contrasts among obstruents are neutralized. Although there are exceptions (such as 'future'), syllable-final rhotics are often lost before a word boundary or before the plural morpheme of most words: (E) / (W) ('color') vs. (E) / (W) ('bright color').

In Central Eastern (and North-Western Catalan), obstruents fail to surface word-finally when preceded by a homorganic consonant (e.g. ). Complex codas simplify only if the loss of the segment doesn't result in the loss of place specification.

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When the suffix is added to it makes , indicating that the underlying representation is (with subsequent cluster simplification), however when the copula is added it makes . The resulting generalization is that this underlying will only surface in a morphologically complex word. Despite this, word-final codas are not usually simplified in most of Balearic and Valencian (e.g. ).

Word-initial clusters from Graeco-Latin learned words tend to drop the first phoneme: (E) / (W) ('pneumatic'), (E) / (W) ('pseudonym'), (E) / (W) ('pterodactylus'), ('gnome').

Word-final obstruents are devoiced; however, they assimilate voicing of the following consonant, e.g. (E) / (W) ('silkworm'). In regular and fast speech, stops often assimilate the place of articulation of the following consonant producing phonetic gemination: ('all good').

Word-final fricatives (except ) are voiced before a following vowel; e.g. (E) / (W) ('huge bus').

Dialectal variation

The differences in the vocalic systems outlined above are the main criteria used to differentiate between the major dialects:
Wheeler distinguishes two major dialect groups, western and eastern dialects; the latter of which only allow , , and to appear in unstressed syllables and include Northern Catalan, Central Catalan, Balearic, and Alguerese. Western dialects, which allow any vowel in unstressed syllables, include Valencian and North-Western Catalan.

Regarding consonants, betacism and fricative–affricate alternations are the most prominent differences between dialects.

Other dialectal features are:
* Vowel harmony with and in Valencian; this process is progressive (i.e. preceding vowels affect those pronounced afterwards) over the last unstressed vowel of a word; e.g. → . However, there are cases where regressive metaphony occurs over pretonic vowels; e.g. → ('towel'), → ('affects').
* In a number of dialects unstressed can merge with (Eastern dialects) or (Western dialects) according to the previous or following vowel (i.e. through assimilation when these vowels are high or dissimilation when they are mid or low). This merger is especially common in words with the prefix or .
* In Southern Valencian subvarieties, especially in Alicante Valencian, the diphthong (phonetically in Valencian) has become : ('bulls').
* In regular speech in both Eastern and Western Catalan dialects, word-initial unstressed – or – may be diphthongized to (Eastern Catalan) or (Western Catalan): ('to drown, suffocate').
* In Aragonese Catalan (including Ribagorçan), is palatalized to in consonant clusters; e.g. 'it rains'.
* In Alguerese and Ribagorçan word-final and are depalatized to and , respectively; e.g. ('rooster'), ('year').
* Varying degrees of L-velarization among dialects: is dark irrespective of position in Balearic and Central Catalan and might tend to vocalization in some cases. In Western varieties like Valencian, this dark l contrasts with a clear l in intervocalic and word-initial position; while in other dialects, like Alguerese or Northern Catalan, is never velarized in any instance.
* (also known as "historic ") in regular speech in most of Majorcan, Northern Catalan and in the historic comarca of Vallès (Barcelona): merges with in some Latin-derived words with intervocalic L-palatalization (intervocalic + yod (--, --), --, --, and --); e.g. ('straw'). An exception to this rule is initial L-palatalization; e.g. ('moon').
* The dorso-palatal may occur in complementary distribution with , only in Majorcan varieties that have dorso-palatals rather than the velars found in most dialects: ('war') vs. ('the war').
* In northern and transitional Valencian, word-initial and postconsonantal (Eastern Catalan and ) alternates with intervocalically; e.g. 'game', but 'worse', 'crazy' (standard Valencian , ; ; standard Catalan , and ).
* In northern Valencia and southern Catalonia has merged with realizations of after a high front vocoid; e.g. ('pottery'), ('I insist') vs. ('to pee'), ('to leave'). In these varieties is not found after other voiced consonants, and merges with after consonants; e.g. ('thorn').
* Intervocalic dropping (particularly participles) in regular speech in Valencian, with compensatory lengthening of vowel ; e.g. ('evening').
* In northern Catalonia and in the town of Sóller (Majorca), a uvular trill or approximant can be heard instead of an alveolar trill; e.g. ('to run').
*In some Valencian dialects final can be lenited before a vowel: ('all this').
*In some dialects (e.g. many Valencian accents) initial can be lenited: (EC) (WC).
*In Majorcan varieties, and become and word-finally and before front vowels, in some of these dialects, this has extended to all environments except before liquids and back vowels; e.g. ('blood').
*In Majorcan and Minorcan Catalan, undergoes total assimilation to a following consonant (just as stops do): ('large puff').
*In some Valencian dialects (e.g. Northern Valencian), and are auditorily similar such that neutralization may occur in the future. That is the case of Northern Valencian where is depalatalized to as in ('box'). Central Valencian words like ('half') and ('ugly') have been transcribed with rather than the expected , and Southern Valencian "has been reported to undergo depalatalization without merging with ". as in ('small steps') versus ('promenade')
*In Aragon and Central Valencian (the so called ), voiced fricatives and affricates are missing (i.e. has merged with , has merged with , with only voiceless realizations occurring) and has merged with the set.

Historical development

Catalan shares features with neighboring Romance languages (Occitan, Italian, Sardinian, French, Spanish).

* Marked contrast of the vowel pairs and , as in other Western Romance languages, except Spanish and Sardinian.
* Lenition of voiced stops as in Galician and Spanish.
* Lack of diphthongization of Latin short , , as in Galician, Sardinian and Portuguese, and unlike French, Spanish and Italian.
* Abundance of diphthongs containing , as in Galician and Portuguese.
* Abundance of and occurring at the end of words, as for instance ("wet") and ("year"), unlike Spanish, Portuguese or Italian.

In contrast with other Romance languages, Catalan has many monosyllabic words; and those ending in a wide variety of consonants and some consonant clusters. Also, Catalan has final obstruent devoicing, thus featuring many couplets like ('male friend') vs. ('female friend').

Phonological sample

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See also

* Catalan dialects
** Alguerese dialect#Phonology
* Index of phonetics articles
* Occitan phonology

References

Bibliography

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Further reading

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External links

A proposal for Catalan SAMPA

Gramàtica de la llengua catalana


Els sons del català


L'estàndard oral valencià

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