Papers by Maria-Rosa Lloret
Caplletra: Revista Internacional de Filologia, Oct 1, 1998
(*) Aquest treball s'ha beneficiat dels projectes DGICYT PB 97-0889 del MEC i SGR 000411 de la CI... more (*) Aquest treball s'ha beneficiat dels projectes DGICYT PB 97-0889 del MEC i SGR 000411 de la CIRIT. Agraïm a M. Pilar Perea els comentaris fets a una primera versió del treball. 0. OBJECTIU L'objectiu d'aquest article és l'estudi de la variació morfològica. La variació morfològica, però, no és un concepte unívoc, i admet més d'una interpretació. La que s'adopta en aquest cas situa la variació morfològica en el nivell profund de la llengua, l'accés al qual requereix l'apel•lació a les regles fonològiques de les varietats dialectals implicades en la variació morfològica. Aquesta apel•lació necessària a les regles fonològiques per abordar la variació morfològica situa el treball en un terreny morfofonològic. I d'aquí el títol. La variació fonológica, però, no és, en ella mateixa, objectiu d'aquest treball, i només és considerada com a via obligada de penetració a la variació morfològica. La dialectologia tradicional dels darrers cinquanta anys, assaonada per l'estructuralisme, ha identificat dues formes de variació dialectal en l'àmbit fònic: la fonètica i la fonológica. La primera dóna compte de la variació dialectal en termes de sons; la segona dóna compte de la variació dialectal en termes de fonemes. Com a efecte del marc teòric estructuralista -en què la fonologia és contemplada com una disciplina
Gender and its Morphological Effects
The Wiley Blackwell Companion to Morphology, vol. 2, p. 857-899 (chapter 32), 2023
In the prevailing linguistic literature, gender is considered as a morphosyntactic property to wh... more In the prevailing linguistic literature, gender is considered as a morphosyntactic property to which agreement is sensitive. Gender is widespread in the world’s languages; there are, however, many languages that lack it, though they may have systems of noun classification for reasons other than grammatical agreement. Gender agreement is an asymmetrical relation in the sense that one member of the agreement relation (the target) depends on the other member (the controller) for the gender property. The element that governs the relation (nouns and, in some languages, deictic pronouns) has lexical gender, though it is not necessarily arbitrary. Where nominal properties and agreement behaviour suggest different genders, agreement is the decisive indication of gender. The assignment of gender to nouns always has a nucleus in which semantics operates, above all grounded on distinctions of animacy, humanness and biological sex; yet often, formal criteria, either alone or together with semantics, determine gender ascription, with the possibility that the gender of some nouns remains unpredictable. In some languages, gender is expressed in the pronominal system only; the existence of grammatical gender in these languages is controversial. Across the languages of the world, gender shows a great variety in the type of agreeing elements and also in the formal devices employed to mark it.
![Research paper thumbnail of Lloret (2023). El pes de la tradició en la classificació verbal del català [The weight of tradition in the verbal classification of Catalan"]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/101267170/thumbnails/1.jpg)
Caplletra. Revista Internacional de Filologia, 2023
In Catalan, the existence of submodels of conjugation with augments in all dialects and conjugati... more In Catalan, the existence of submodels of conjugation with augments in all dialects and conjugation classes, along with the limited number of verbs that conjugations II (batre, témer, poder, dir) and IIIa (dormir) have, leads to the conclusion that two proposals are reasonably possible with regard to the organization of verbal classes. Either one admits that all conjugations display regular subconjugations with augments (velar or palatal) (in line with Viaplana’s 1994 seminal work), or one accepts that regular conjugations are limited to the classes that are productive, i.e., conjugation I (cantar) and, far away, conjugation IIIb (servir) (in line with Ferrater’s 1970 remarks). In any case, based on frequency and dialectal variation, the maintenance of the models of regular conjugation proposed by the traditional grammar (I: cantar; II: batre o témer; IIIa: dormir, IIIb: servir) does not seem operative any more. With these observations in mind, the aim of this paper is twofold: on the one hand, to revise the traditional and dialectological motivations that still sustain the verbal classification and, on the other, to rethink the traditional models of regular conjugation in the light of language teaching efficiency.
Veny, J. & T. Cabré (ed.) (2022). Antoni M. Badia i Margarit : rellevància acadèmica, inquietud científica i servei a la llengua : commemoració del centenari del seu naixement. Barcelona: IEC, 2022
La taula 2 mostra les obres de Badia esmentades de manera explícita en els manuals clàssics de mo... more La taula 2 mostra les obres de Badia esmentades de manera explícita en els manuals clàssics de morfologia i lexicologia del català que he buidat.
Estudis de llengua i literatura catalanes (Miscel·lània Lídia Pons I), LXXVI, 2022
Revista de Filología de la Universidad de La Laguna, 2020
Resumen Con la desaparición del género neutro en el paso del latín a las lenguas románicas, los a... more Resumen Con la desaparición del género neutro en el paso del latín a las lenguas románicas, los adjetivos latinos de tres terminaciones se adaptaron en catalán como adjetivos de dos ter-minaciones, normalmente con las marcas Ø para el masculino y-a para el femenino, como en clar-Ø 'claro' ~ clar-a 'clara'; este patrón es transparente y máximamente icónico. Los adjetivos de dos terminaciones, en cambio, se convirtieron en invariables, como en catalán antiguo fort-Ø 'fuerte'. El sincretismo de género, a pesar de los problemas de iconicidad y transparencia que genera, podría mantenerse si las clases invariables estuvieran definidas por propiedades extramorfológicas que contribuyeran a su estabilidad, como sucede en español con la terminación-e, que permite adscribir los adjetivos a la clase de invariables (por ej., fuerte). En catalán, sin embargo, la ausencia de terminaciones específicas para los invariables agrava los problemas de iconicidad y transparencia de estas formas, por lo que la tendencia a crear femeninos analógicos (como fort-a 'fuerte, fem.') es más fuerte que en español. //
Abstract Due to the loss of the neutral gender in the evolution from Latin to Romance languages, three-ending Latin adjectives were adapted as two-ending adjectives in Catalan, usually with the marks Ø in the masculine and-a in the feminine, as in clar 'clear, masc.' ~ clar-a 'clear, fem.'; this pattern is transparent and maximally iconic. Two-ending Latin adjectives became invariable instead, as in old Catalan fort-Ø 'strong', giving rise to gender syncretic forms, which lack transparency and iconicity. Despite the naturalness challenges raised by syncretism, it can be maintained if invariable classes are defined by extramorpholog-ical properties that enhance their stability, as is the case of Spanish with the ending-e determining membership to the invariable gender class (e.g., fuert-e 'strong'). In Catalan, though, the lack of exclusive endings for invariable adjectives worsens their iconicity and transparency, and so the tendency to create analogical feminine forms (e.g., fort-a 'strong, fem.') is stronger than in Spanish.
Jiménez & Lloret (2020). Vowel harmony. In Sonia Colina, Fernando Martínez-Gil (eds.) The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Phonology. Oxon, New York: Routledge, 100-128.
The Routledge Handbook of Spanish Phonology, 2020
Vowel harmony refers to the phonological phenomenon that requires vowels in certain morphological... more Vowel harmony refers to the phonological phenomenon that requires vowels in certain morphological or prosodic domains to agree in specific phonological features. This chapter presents a thorough revision of vowel harmony in southeastern peninsular Spanish, where the loss of some final consonants is compensated by opening the preceding vowel and the lax character of this vowel extends to the preceding syllables, as in nenes /nenes/: [ˈnɛnɛ] ‘boys’. Although the opening of the rightmost vowel is usually transmitted to the left irrespective of the morphological filiation of the deleted consonant (as in Granada and Murcia), vowel harmony may be limited to lax vowels related to the loss of consonants belonging to certain inflectional suffixes (as in Jaén). The behavior of high vowels is another source of variation: they can either fully participate in the process (as in Jaén) or act as neutral vowels (as in Granada and Murcia). Regarding the harmonic domain, vowel harmony obligatorily targets the stressed syllable — the most prominent in the word —, but it can also affect the stressed and the posttonic syllables — the main foot — or all the syllables in the word, sometimes permitting gapped configurations (as in Granada). After formalizing the different harmonic patterns attested in southern peninsular Spanish within a prominence-based licensing approach in Optimality Theory, we extend the typology to other Iberian Romance varieties displaying vowel harmony (Cantabrian Spanish, Asturian, and Valencian Catalan).
Sintagma. Revista de Lingüística, 32: 23-38, 2020
This article presents the main tenets of the Parallel Structures Model (Morén, 2003, 2006), a rec... more This article presents the main tenets of the Parallel Structures Model (Morén, 2003, 2006), a recently new autosegmental model, and applies it, for the first time, to the analysis of some phonological phenomena in Spanish. In particular, the paper illustrates the explanatory advantages of adopting the Parallel Structures Model in the analysis of the realizations of /s/ in coda followed by a voiceless stop within a word, because the wide range of realizations reported for such contexts in aspirant varieties of Spanish poses an interesting challenge to representational theories concerned with the internal structure of segments.
Carrilho, A. R.; Cao, A. B.; Vázquez, I; Osório, P.; Flores, T. (ed.) (2020). Ao Encontro das Línguas Ibéricas II. LusoSofia Presss, p. 21-41., 2020
En este artículo se discuten algunos fenómenos singulares que presenta la fonología del catalán e... more En este artículo se discuten algunos fenómenos singulares que presenta la fonología del catalán en comparación con otras lenguas románicas, con la finalidad de investigar los efectos graduales que pueden presentar los fenómenos lingüísticos así como la manera en que interactúan los factores que condicionan la variación detectada en las variedades románicas. En concreto, se analizan distintos sistemas de reducción vocálica, desde la perspectiva de la correlación entre prominencia segmental, prosódica y secuencial; la neutralización de sonoridad entre palabras que afecta a las obstruyentes finales prevocálicas, desde la perspectiva de la coherencia segmental y de la prominencia secuencial, y un proceso de lenición que experimentan algunas africadas en posición intervocálica. El objetivo final es demostrar que los distintos sistemas documentados no obedecen al azar, sino a patrones inclusivos controlados por determinadas características universales.
Jesús Jiménez, Maria-Rosa Lloret, Clàudia Pons-Moll (2019/published online: 2017). Syllabically-driven stricture effects in Majorcan Catalan high vocoids.
Probus. International Journal of Romance Linguistics, 2019
This paper analyzes the variation found in Majorcan Catalan regarding the realizations of /i/ and... more This paper analyzes the variation found in Majorcan Catalan regarding the realizations of /i/ and /u/ in contact with other vowels, which depend on the nature of the vocoids themselves, the syllabic position in which they occur, their surrounding segmental context, and the geographic origin of the speakers. Leaving aside faithful hiatic solutions, their realizations range from different degrees of strengthening to fusion and deletion, and further coexist with some instances of /v/-weakening. To account for these patterns, we provide a unified analysis within the split margin approach to syllable organization (Baertsch 1998, 2002), with phonetic grounding supporting the distinction between [+high] and [–high] for palatal glides (but not for their labial counterparts) and the approximant character of /v/ in intervocalic position. We also show that, in order to explain the whole variation, markedness constraints referring to the harmony of segments in intervocalic position (Kirchner 1998; Uffmann 2007), and their specific interaction with faithfulness constraints, are needed.
Adjusting to the syllable margins: Glides in Spanish and Catalan
Mark Gibson; Juana Gil (ed.). Romance phonetics and phonology. Oxford: Oxford University Press., 2019
In this paper we bring together data from several varieties of Catalan and Spanish with the purpo... more In this paper we bring together data from several varieties of Catalan and Spanish with the purpose of investigating the behavior of glides (i.e., /j/ and /w/) in onsets and codas, and the way they adjust to the syllable margins. We cast our analysis within Optimality Theory and, more specifically, we provide support for the distinction proposed by Baertsch (2002) between elements which are parsed as the leftmost element in the onset (M1: Margin 1) and elements which are syllabified as codas or as the second element in the onset (M2: Margin 2). The data indicate, though, that sometimes an explicit reference to the intersyllabic context in which M1 elements appear is also required.
Probus. International Journal of Romance Linguistics, 2018
Catalan has a [ʒ] ~ [t͡ʃ] alternation that has traditionally been viewed as the consequence of fi... more Catalan has a [ʒ] ~ [t͡ʃ] alternation that has traditionally been viewed as the consequence of final affrication of an underlying /ʒ/, a fortition operation, followed by general devoicing of obstruents. This interpretation has been held in classical generative rule-based approaches and also in autosegmental models, amounting either to a highly specific process or, when an attempt is made to generalize it, to wrong predictions; these shortcomings are also applicable to optimality-theoretic analyses. Following ideas in Wheeler (2005) we propose that underlying affricates are subject to intervocalic lenition triggered by independently motivated general constraints. Sequences of a stop followed by a fricative can become affricates but cannot be affected by lenition. The interaction between affricates and gemination is also discussed.
ed.) (2016): 53 reflexiones sobre aspectos de la fonética y otros temas de lingüística, Barcelona,
Miscel·lània d’Homenatge a Joan Martí i Castell (ed. M. A. Pradilla Cardona), vol. II, p. 105-109. , 2016
In: Fischer, Susann; Gabriel, Christoph (ed.), Manual of Grammatical Interfaces in Romance, (Manuals of Romance Linguistics Series, vol. 10). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, p. 105-147., 2016
One major research question in Optimality Theory (OT) that directly tackles phenomena at the inte... more One major research question in Optimality Theory (OT) that directly tackles phenomena at the interface of phonology and morphology is whether the model should allow intermediate levels of representation or not. This chapter takes on this discussion by presenting phenomena from Romance languages that challenge the parallel version of OT, in order to contrast the additional mechanisms proposed to maintain parallelism (especially, output-to-output constraints of several kinds and alignment constraints) with the analyses provided within different serial (stratal, derivational or cyclic) versions of OT. A further issue discussed under the light of parallel and serial versions of OT is the mechanism for phonologically conditioned allomorph selection. The data include, among others, French adjectival liaison, definite article allomorphy in Galician and Italian, Spanish diphthongization, vowel reduction and epenthesis in Catalan, and palatalization in Romanian.
Los lindes de la morfología. Anexos de Revista de Lexicografía, 37 (ed. S. Alcoba, C. Buenafuente & G. Clavería), 2016
Maria-Rosa Lloret; Clàudia Pons-Moll (2016). Catalan Vowel Epenthesis as Evidence for the Free Ride Approach to Morphophonemic Learning. Linguistic Inquiry. Winter 2016, Vol. 47, No. 1: 147–157
Linguistic Inquiry. Winter 2016, Vol. 47, No. 1: 147–157, 2016
Algherese Catalan has the peculiarity of presenting an inserted [i] vowel across words in order t... more Algherese Catalan has the peculiarity of presenting an inserted [i] vowel across words in order to avoid certain consonant codas. In this study, we compare five acoustic features of this epenthetic segment (i.e., duration, intensity, and the three first formants) with those of lexical /i/ vowels, both stressed and unstressed. The results indicate that the three vowels present differences only with respect to duration, F2 and, to a lesser extent, F3. The second formant values decline progressively from the lexical stressed vowels to the inserted unstressed segments, with lexical unstressed segments at an intermediate point. This gradation mirrors the relative prominence of each vowel. The differences in F2 between lexical stressed and unstressed vowels can be attributed to the shorter duration of the later segments. Lexical unstressed and inserted vowels, however, have an equivalent duration, challenging the idea that inserted vowels are more centralized due to their shorter duration. All in all, the data point to a double contrast: first, between lexical stressed and unstressed segments and, second, between unstressed segments.
Procedia. Social and Behavioral Sciences, vol. 198, pp. 89-94., 2015
In this article we present the most relevant new aspects from the COD2 project, which is based on... more In this article we present the most relevant new aspects from the COD2 project, which is based on an oral dialectal corpus of contemporary Catalan created as a continuation of the first COD compiled two decades before. In the first place, the new project intends to analyze the changes undergone by the Catalan language during this period. In second place, we no longer center the linguistic analysis on the traditional generativist techniques but on the tenets of Optimality Theory. And, finally, we use new dialectometric techniques based principally on probabilistic analytical procedures.
Caplletra. Revista Internacional de Filologia, vol. 58 , 2015
The position of the appreciative/evaluative derivation within morphology is exceptional, because,... more The position of the appreciative/evaluative derivation within morphology is exceptional, because, although the limited information that grammars and dictionaries reveal as for its formation and use, speakers freely use evaluative forms in familiar and informal contexts and often create new words without the restraints traditionally imposed by the grammatical norms. As we will see, although the shape of these forms presents some variation, it complies with some well-defined constraints. This paper presents new data in this field collected through traditional corpora and internet, with a two-fold aim. The first purpose is to thoroughly examine the morphological characteristics of the appreciative suffixation in Catalan, with especial reference to the categories that are usually ignored in the literature (i.e., evaluative forms derived from categories other than nouns, adjectives and verbs). The second purpose has to do with the distributional restrictions that traditional words and new words show with respect to the endings they allow, in order to identify which true nominal inflectional marks Catalan has.
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Papers by Maria-Rosa Lloret
Abstract Due to the loss of the neutral gender in the evolution from Latin to Romance languages, three-ending Latin adjectives were adapted as two-ending adjectives in Catalan, usually with the marks Ø in the masculine and-a in the feminine, as in clar 'clear, masc.' ~ clar-a 'clear, fem.'; this pattern is transparent and maximally iconic. Two-ending Latin adjectives became invariable instead, as in old Catalan fort-Ø 'strong', giving rise to gender syncretic forms, which lack transparency and iconicity. Despite the naturalness challenges raised by syncretism, it can be maintained if invariable classes are defined by extramorpholog-ical properties that enhance their stability, as is the case of Spanish with the ending-e determining membership to the invariable gender class (e.g., fuert-e 'strong'). In Catalan, though, the lack of exclusive endings for invariable adjectives worsens their iconicity and transparency, and so the tendency to create analogical feminine forms (e.g., fort-a 'strong, fem.') is stronger than in Spanish.