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Lecture: Unfolding the phonological history of Galician-Portuguese Diminutives

Languages change. Every time we say a word, we pronounce it in a different way. Therefore, there is a chance for a language to change every time we use it. We can describe changes by comparing written records of different periods to observe how sounds evolve over time. But one question is often left aside: what makes sounds change?

In my undergraduate thesis I describe the prehistory and phonological evolution of the Galician-Portuguese diminutive suffix -inho in words such as Gal. gatiña or Port. gatinha 'kitten'. But, more importantly, I try to discover what lies behind the sound changes that affected it and whether they can be explained on an articulatory basis. Starting from Galician-Portuguese, a language spoken in the Northwest of the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages, I trace this suffix back to Latin and then to Indo-European. In doing so, I show that some changes appear to "undo" themselves. For example, the alveolar nasal in Lat. -īnum /i:num/ was lost in Galician-Portuguese /ĩo/, but the nasality remained in the word after the nasal feature shifted to the preceding vowel. However, a nasal consonant reappeared at a later time, denasalizing the previously nasalized vowel /iɲo/ at the phonological level. Join me to discover why that would happen!

Info

Day: 2019-05-25
Start time: 15:00
Duration: 00:30
Room: 100 / Hörsaal XVIIb
Track: Historical linguistics
Language: en

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