Metaphony in Italian and Spanish dialects revisited

Metaphony is a historic phonological process by which the tonic vowel of a word assimilates a feature of a following postonic vowel. As a result, most discussions of metaphony have been within a diachronic framework. In many of the Italian dialects which demonstrate metaphony to one degree or another, the postonic vowels, which historically triggered the tonic vowel change, have neutralized or been entirely lost. This often means that metaphony has been morphologized.Generally two kinds of metaphony are discussed for Italian dialects: (1) a napoletano type which diphthongizes lax mid vowels and raises tense mid vowels, and (2) an arpinate type which raises all mid vowels. These two types are not adequate when considering the dialects such as in the Valle Anzasca in Lombardy which demonstrate vowel fronting (for example pro 'pasture' vs. prow 'pastures').This thesis, by considering data from some ninety Italian dialects, establishes three types of metaphony: (1) a type in which metaphony is accounted for by means of a suprasegmental (high), which becomes associated to the tonic vowel by means of spreading from a postonic vowel or through the attaching of a morpheme which is specified by it (not having any slots of its own on the CV tier), (2) a type that requires the morpheme to be specified by both (high) and (Front), and (3) a type which might be referred to as 'anti-metaphony' since the feature (low) is the key to understanding metaphony, and not (high).These three types are then compared to Spanish types which also use the feature (high) to define metaphony and another Spanish type which uses (-ATR).U of I OnlyETDs are only available to UIUC Users without author permissio