Category talk:Italian terms with unexpected vowel outcomes

fràsseno > fràssino

Hi @Nicodene! Thank you for de-stub-ifying the introduction. I was planning on removing the third point you've added though, since I feel like that's not really some "Tuscan raising", but an aspect of the vowel system in general. In words stressed on the ante-penult (sdrucciole), the Latin post-tonic ⟨ĭ⟩ yields /i/, while ⟨ĕ⟩ yields /e/ (cf. cenere, credere, Tevere, etc.). This seems thus to predate the merger of Proto-Italo-Western unstressed /ɛ/ and /e/, or may date back even more, parallel to the [ˌσσˈσσ] /ɪ ʊ/ ~ /i u/ merger (which I read from the wiki article you wrote), thus being a characteristic proper of Proto-Romance (a claim which is hard to verify since post-tonic vowels in sdrucciole tend to get distorted the most and in most places). Catonif (talk) 23:31, 22 August 2022 (UTC)

Hi @Catonif. The early merger in words of the [ˌσσˈσσ] type resulted in 'weak' /ɪ ʊ/, hence Italian outcomes such as verrò < *veniráyo < venīre habeō, where the resulting vowel was simply lost. Additional Romance examples are available on the talk page of the article in question. I should probably change the phrasing in the article itself to be more specific.

As for the raising of unstressed /e/ to /i/ in Tuscan, see Gerhard Rohlfs' comments here (from Grammatica storica della lingua italiana). The tendency is, admittedly, weak in final position and may indeed result from analogy, as proposed by one D'Ovidio.

The fate of Latin /ĕ/ in the second syllable of proparoxytones is curious. It really does seem that Italian, like the Florentine on which it is based, more-or-less consistently has /e/ as the outcome, while Latin /ĭ/ yields /i/ or sometimes /a/. (There is at least one counterexample, namely the archaic giovine < juvĕnem.) I am at a loss for an explanation here and will have to think about it more.

Meanwhile the peripheral Tuscan dialect of Arezzo has /e/ for Latin /ĭ/ in that position (per Rohlfs: femena, termene, ordene, nobele). Nicodene (talk) 08:44, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

@Nicodene: verrò is an irregular outcome: clippings are not uncommon in everyday use verbs, like venire. Compare instead regular verbs capirò, colpirò, poltrirò with venderò, crederò. Non-verb examples can lie in continente, capitano, delicato, caricare. verrò could likely just be a further evolution of venirò. This 'raising' even makes is way somehow in words of relatively recent coinage, like scioglilingua (third person singular whould be scioglie), in general all verb-noun formations, that once had the third person singular in -ĭt.

Thank you for sharing that resource. It seems like it's covering exhaustively our question. In general, it looks like the expected outcome would be /e/ for ĕ and /i/ for ĭ, whith a non-trascurable amount of oscilation in certain words, but that's to be expected. Here in Central Italy (outside of Rome, that is) in dialectal contexts it's not uncommon to hear fémmana, stòmmico, pòrteno (for respectively fé(m)mina, stòmaco, pòrtano) and in general, penults vowel in sdrucciole (or 'proparoxytones') seems to always be the most distorted in entire peninsula, so it's only natural that some unexpected outcomes eventually leak into the written standard, like gióvane/gióvine, instead of gióvene, -évole instead of -évile (influenced by the occasional velarization of -l-), or Rohlfs' -a- in sèdano, Bèrgamo etc.

The Arretine question is interesting, but overall, it's just a merger of post-tonic /i/ and /e/.

Maybe I should have actually made the category 'Italian terms with unexpected unstressed vowel changes'. Catonif (talk) 10:17, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

@Catonif Yes, clippings in general are irregular, but that verrò exists at all (with the same outcome as e.g. *biberáyo 'I'll drink') is suggestive considering the broader Romance context.

If Arretine really experienced 'a [secondary] merger of post-tonic /i/ and /e/', we would expect final /-i/ and /-e/ to have merged. Did they?

I would not name the category that, because anaphonesis very much is expected. Nicodene (talk) 12:06, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

@Nicodene: Yes, indeed the -i- of *veniràyo was undoubtably 'short', but the quality of it was still a high [i], in stead of [ɪ] or [e].

Oh, I forgot to write 'post-tonic [in proparoxytones]' about Arretine, since the whole discussion was about proparoxytones. Final vowels are generally well preserved throughout the peninsula, with consinsistent mergers: final vowel mergers map (the picture says 'atonal vowels' in general, but that's not true). The 'weak' vowels (as in [ˈσσσ] or [ˌσσˈσσ]) instead generally seem to suffer way more significant distorsion, oscillation and occasional irregularities. It's also the same position in which -ar- shifts to -er- in standard Italian, and in which Proto-Italic -ă- shifted to Latin -ĭ-, and Sicilians call them uncertain vowels.

In case of renaming the category content would be different, yes. Anaphonesis wouldn't be there, since it's both expected and (mostly) stressed. Catonif (talk) 13:05, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

Agree to disagree then. Nicodene (talk) 14:37, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

@Nicodene: I guess. Did I repeat myself there? Sorry. Anyways, do you agree with the creation of the new category (and subsequent deletion of this one)? Or do you (most understandable) not care about this? Catonif (talk) 17:21, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

@Catonif That was a bit brusque of me, sorry. A category strictly for 'Italian terms with unexpected vowel outcomes' could be interesting. We might as well include stressed vowel outcomes, since cases such as quindi and tutto are curious. Those appear to be the only words in the current list with truly unexpected vowel outcomes, assuming we accept the following as expected:

1) Anaphonesis

2) Pre-/post-tonic raising (keeping in mind that its absence can also be expected, e.g. word-finally or when analogy prevents it)

Rohlfs' comments provides several candidates for the proposed list:

• Unexpected /a/: giovane, sedano, abrotano, ebano, orafo, cofano, pampano (apparently a variant of pampino), Bergamo, cronaca, indaco, Modana†, filosafo†
• Unexpected /-i/: avanti, dieci, dodici, fuori, forsi, quasi, (perhaps- as Rohlfs says- simply from Latin influence), quinci, ogni, oggi, domani, tardi, lungi, anzi, altrimenti, parimenti
• Unexpected /-i-/: giovine†

We may also add semola, attimo, altrimenti, nespolo (< mespĭlus), -evole, nuvolo.

Incidentally, I suspect quindi may be by analogy with quinci, where /ˈi/ is of course regular. The two make for a natural pair. Nicodene (talk) 18:56, 23 August 2022 (UTC)

@Nicodene: I agree with that being the best course of action. I could do it as soon as I get back to my computer. Catonif (talk) 23:11, 23 August 2022 (UTC)