Sibilant Turmoil in Middle Spanish (1450-1650)

Abstract

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. This content downloaded from 128.235.251.160 on Sun, 15 Mar 2015 09:00:37 UTC All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions SIBILANT TURMOIL IN MIDDLE SPANISH (1450-1650)TWO decades have passed since the publication of the first volume of Amado Alonso's masterly study of the evolution of Spanish pronunciation from medieval to modern times. A muchneeded revision of that first volume, which required twelve years' effort on the part of the continuators, appeared in 1967 and two years later the second volume, which treats the major sibilant changes and their resultant confusion, was published. The two volumes that have already appeared were prepared by Rafael Lapesa, Alonso's friend and colleague, to whom the Harvard professor entrusted the publication of his work a few short months before his untimely death in 1952. Lapesa has been aided in this undertaking by Maria Josefa Canellada de Zamora and by the members of Men6ndez Pidal's seminar of the University of Madrid. In the following brief note inspired by our careful reading and frequent consultation of Volume I1i of Alonso's work, we intend to comment critically on its content and conclusions and, more important, to present newly discovered material, the observations of Juan de Baraona y de Padilla on the Spanish of his day, four centuries ago.Volume ii of Alonso's work contains Chapters iv, v, and vi plus two Appendices and is a slender volume when compared to the size of Volume I. The three chapters treat historically the s (pp. 12-46), the ceceo-seseo (pp. 47-144), and s, z, and x in final position (pp. 145-174). The two Appendices (pp. 175-249) treat varied aspects of the evolution of Spanish sibilants. Chapters iv, vi, and Amado Alonso, De la pronunciacidn medieval a la moderna, II, ultimado y dispuesto para la imprenta por Rafael Lapesa (Madrid: Gredos, 1969).

Systemic Contrast and the Diachrony of Spanish Sibilant Voicing

“…There is a substantial body of research dealing with the development of the sibilant system in Spanish (Ford 1900, Espinosa 1935, Montoliu 1945, Joos 1952, Jungeman 1955, Catalán 1957, Dámaso Alonso 1962, Galmés de Fuentes 1962, Amado Alonso 1967, Martinet 1955, Malkiel 1971, Lantolf 1974, Kiddle 1977, Lloyd 1987, Harris-Northall 1992, Salvador & Ariza 1992, Pensado 1993, and Penny 1993. In this section, we first present the major diachronic stages involving voiced and voiceless sibilants, beginning with the medieval period.…”

Documenting Feature Pools in Language Expansion Situations: Sibilants in Early Colonial Latin American Spanish

“…This is the case, for instance, of /ʃ/or /ʒ/ from /ʝ/ in some Southern Cone varieties or /ʒ/ from /ʎ/ in some Ecuadorian varieties (Lipski : 170, 248, 340). This situation is markedly different from previous stages in the evolution of Spanish, as demonstrated by a large body of literature (among others, Alonso ; Martinet ; Catalán ; Menéndez Pidal ; Cock Hincapié 1969; Boyd‐Bowman ; ; Kiddle ; Alvar [1974]; Guitarte ; Lapesa [1957]; 2005 [1981]; Widdison ; Frago Gracia ; ; Pensado ; Allen ; Cano Aguilar ; Ariza ; Alarcos Llorach [1950]). Despite an abundance of scholarly elaboration, there is still little consensus about many of the structural and social factors that have contributed to shape the evolution of sibilants in Spanish.…”

“…The resulting system is presented in Table . This system appears to have been still in use in some central Castilian varieties as late as the sixteenth century, and it operated as a prestige, elitist articulatory norm (Alonso ; ; Menéndez Pidal ; Kiddle : 328–9; Penny : 99–100; Hidalgo : 42–3).…”

“…Towards the last decades of the sixteenth century, witnesses comment on the widespread nature of the place of articulation merger, and indicate that it was already interpreted as a dialectal marker. For instance, in a pedagogical treaty on good behaviour published in 1577, Juan de Barahona (born in Jerez de la Frontera, in western Andalusia), transparently describes these dialectal differences in terms of both place of articulation merger and devoicing:

[among the differences] in pronunciation and spelling between Castilians and Andalusians […], it is a common defect in Andalusia [‘comun defecto en el Andaluzia’] for people not to know how to pronounce and spell, as necessary, the following three letters, namely c , s , and z , because almost all of them do not use anything else other than s when they speak and write (quoted in Kiddle : 333).

…”

“…[among the differences] in pronunciation and spelling between Castilians and Andalusians […], it is a common defect in Andalusia [‘comun defecto en el Andaluzia’] for people not to know how to pronounce and spell, as necessary, the following three letters, namely c , s , and z , because almost all of them do not use anything else other than s when they speak and write (quoted in Kiddle : 333).…”