Italo-Romance Phonological Rules and Indo-Aryan Lexicon: The Case of Abruzzian Romani

Abruzzian Romani can be considered a rather conservative Romani dialect; phonological units, morphology and lexicon have undergone very slight modification with respect to early Romani. Of course Abruzzian Romani shows also significant innovations especially in the domain of the phonological rules, which appear totally borrowed fromAbruzzese dialect. One can observe: 1) Propagation of /u/ in syllables having a velar obstruent in the onset: cfr. [u 'kwa\u283t\u259] \u201cthe stick\u201d, , [tu 'xwas\u259] \u201cyou eat\u201d. 2) Prosthetic [a-] in words beginning in consonant; cfr. [ad'de:l\u259] \u201cit rains\u201d, [app\u259'ne:le] \u201che/she says\u201d 3) Epithetic vowel [-\u259] in lexemes etymologically ending in consonant: cfr. ['jekk\u259] \u201cone\u201d, ['ratt\u259] \u201cnight\u201d. 4) Reduction to [\u259] of unstressed final vowels: cfr. ['ma\u14bg\u259] \u201cto us\u201d, ['kokw\u259l\u259] \u201cbone\u201d. 5) Fortition + voicing of /s/ after nasal consonant: cfr. [ke'rents\u259n\u259] \u201cthey were doing\u201d < [ke'rents\u259n\u259]. 6) Palatalization of the alveolar fricative /s/ before alveolar stops: cfr. ['gra\u283t\u259] \u201chorse\u201d, ['va\u283t\u259] \u201chand\u201d. 7) Devoicing of intervocalic /d/ in post-tonic position: cfr. ['ga:t\u259] \u201cshirt\u201d, ['kli:t\u259] \u201ckey\u201d. All these phonological rules can be described only as processes acting on phonological features and not on phonological units; consequently they cannot have been induced through lexical loanwords. Very clear in this respect are the imitation of the Abruzzese prosodic structure and the propagation of /u/, which in Abruzzian Romani affects also /x/, a phonological unit unknown to Abruzzese. Abruzzian Romani speakers, all bilingual with Abruzzese, seem to manage a unique set of phonological rules (corresponding to that of Abruzzese), applying them to two different phonemic inventories