Sicilian Vowel System
Encyclopedia
.jpg)
.jpg)
Sicilian language
Sicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Extreme-Southern Italian language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria ; in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento ; and Campania, on the Italian mainland, where it is...
vowel system is characteristic of the dialects of Sicily
Sicily
Sicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
, Southern Calabria
Calabria
Calabria , in antiquity known as Bruttium, is a region in southern Italy, south of Naples, located at the "toe" of the Italian Peninsula. The capital city of Calabria is Catanzaro....
, and Salento
Salento
Salento is the south-eastern extremity of the Apulia region of Italy. It is a sub-peninsula of the main Italian Peninsula, sometimes described as the "heel" of the Italian "boot"...
. It may alternatively be referred to as the Sicilian vocalic scheme or the Calabro-Sicilian vowel system.
The Sicilian vowel system differs greatly from the "normal" evolution of the Classical Latin vowel system into the Vulgar Latin vowel system found in the greater part of the Romance area. In this system, there was a lowering (laxing) of short [i], [e], [o], and [u] into a seven-vowel system. In the development of the Sicilian vowel system from that of Classical Latin, long [e] was raised to [i] and fused with both quantities of [i]; short [e] was lowered to [ɛ] with an analogous development with the round vowels; i.e. long [o] was raised to [u] and fused with both quantities of [u]; short [o] was lowered to [ɔ]. This resulted in a five-vowel system.
Exact historical development of the Sicilian vowel system is unknown. In southern dialects with the Sicilian vowel system, the general raising of [e] and [o] to [i] and [u] means that it is impossible to tell whether metaphony
Metaphony
In historical linguistics, metaphony is a general term for a class of sound change in which one vowel in a word is influenced by another in a process of assimilation....
originally affected the high mid vowels. Rohlfs
Gerhard Rohlfs
Gerhard Rohlfs was a German linguist. He taught Romance languages and literature at the universities of Tübingen and Munich in Germany. He was described as an "archeologist of words"....
holds the view that this system is not the result of internal change, but of a later romanization (neoromanizzazione) of Sicily after the breakdown of Byzantine domination. Fanciullo (1984), however, claims that there was an uninterrupted continuation of Romance dialects during Byzantine domination. He explains the Sicilian vowel system through bilingualism, where Romance [e], [o] was identified with Byzantine [i], [u]; variation between the two vowel systems seems to have persisted until the post-Norman era. The ambivalent nature of Sicilian vowel development has resulted in various attempts to determine whether the vowels developed as in Italo-Western or as in Sardinian
Sardinian language
Sardinian is a Romance language spoken and written on most of the island of Sardinia . It is considered the most conservative of the Romance languages in terms of phonology and is noted for its Paleosardinian substratum....
, with the subsequent merger to [i] and [u]. Calvano argued that Sicilian is an Italo-Western language, given the observation that Sicilian vocalism, but not Sardinian vocalism, is predictable from that of Italo-Western. Lausberg posited that a variation of the Italo-Western development by merging lax, high vowels with tense, mid vowel
Mid vowel
A mid vowel is a vowel sound used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned mid-way between an open vowel and a close vowel...
s to lax, high vowels, followed by the merger which is peculiar to Sicilian. Bertoni, whose work was taken up again in Schiaffini (1957), argued that Sicilian had an intermediate Sardinian development on the basis of thirteenth century texts. Hall grouped Sicilian along with Sardinian: "The earliest group [Southern Romance] to split off [from Proto-Romance] through not sharing in the merger of [short i] and [long e], involved Sardinian, Lucanian and Sicilian... Proto-Italo-Western was then defined as the "intermediate stage that was the parent of the Romance languages not included in the Southern or Eastern groups".
An obvious quality of the Sicilian vowel system is the restriction of vowels other than the aforementioned five (a, è, i, ò, u). This results in the unstressed vowel [o] of Latin becoming an unstressed [u] in Sicilian. This causes the vowel [u] to have a far greater presence than the vowel [o] in Sicilian, while the opposite is true of other Romance languages such as Spanish and Italian (notwithstanding the conservative nature of Sicilian which retains the vowel [u] of the Latin stems -us and -um). Likewise, the unstressed vowel [e] of Latin becomes unstressed vowel [i] in Sicilian. As a result, the vowel [i] has a much greater presence than vowel [e] in Sicilian. In addition, one will never find a Sicilian word ending in the unaccented vowels [e] or [o], with the exception of monosyllabic conjunctions. Due to the influence of Italian in the media post-World War II, as well as the recent influx of English terminology related to technology and globalization, there is an increasing number of words entering the Sicilian lexicon that do not adhere to the Sicilian vowel system. However, Sicilian is a vigorous language and historically, has always Sicilianized foreign loanwords over time.
See also
- SicilySicilySicily is a region of Italy, and is the largest island in the Mediterranean Sea. Along with the surrounding minor islands, it constitutes an autonomous region of Italy, the Regione Autonoma Siciliana Sicily has a rich and unique culture, especially with regard to the arts, music, literature,...
- Sicilian SchoolSicilian SchoolThe Sicilian School was a small community of Sicilian, and to a lesser extent, mainland Italian poets gathered around Frederick II, most of them belonging to his court, the Magna Curia. Headed by Giacomo da Lentini, they produced more than three-hundred poems of courtly love between 1230 and 1266,...
- Sicilian languageSicilian languageSicilian is a Romance language. Its dialects make up the Extreme-Southern Italian language group, which are spoken on the island of Sicily and its satellite islands; in southern and central Calabria ; in the southern parts of Apulia, the Salento ; and Campania, on the Italian mainland, where it is...
- Gallo-siculoGallo-siculoThe Gallo-Italic of Sicily is a group of Gallo-Italic dialects, linguistic set of Romance languages, found in central-eastern Sicily that date back to migrations from Northern Italy during the time of Norman Roger I of Sicily and which continued after his death under his successor Roger II .The...
- Siculo Arabic
- Southern Romance