Re: Southwestern Romance L-clusters and the "Lambdaphobia"

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Joao S. Lopes" <josimo70@...> wrote:

>
> Is there any substratal explanation for the development of L-clusters in Western Romance, particularly Portuguese (kl>s^), Spanish (kl> l^) and Italian dialects (kl > kY)?
>

Not only *initial* kl- but also pl- and fl- produced these results. Apparently, in these Romances (but not in Spanish), they yielded a palatalized velar [kJ], assibilated to Galician-Portuguese [ts^] (later deaffricated in std Portuguese). Also in a few cases, Spanish has initial [ts^], as in chato, chopo, choza, and regularly after a nasal, as in ancho, hinchar.

But the regular result in Spanish is [l^], due to a tense articulation [l:] like the one found in initial l- in Catalan and Asturian, where it became palatalizated. In fact, in most Ibero-Romance languages the tense lateral [l:] and nasal [n:] became palatalized, but in Western Asturian and Pyrenaic (including part of Aragonese and Gascon), [l:] was delateralized, respectively becoming a palato-alveolar affricate [ts\] and a palatal stop [t^] (dialectally [t] or [ts^]), which intervocally was lenied to -r- in Gascon (also found residually in the Aragonese definite article variants ro(s), ra(s)). Delateralization of [l:] is also typical in some South Italian varieties (e.g. Sicilian), where we find a retroflex stop [d`:].

> Why this "lambdaphobia"? In Portuguese L is much more "hated", with intervocalic L > zero.
>

Not exactly. Although lenition of stops is common in Western Romance, Galician-Portuguese is alone for having lenied both laterals -ll- [l:] > -l- and -l- > 0 as well as nasals -nn- [n:] > -n- and -n- > 0. This partially agrees with Basque (-ll-,-nn-,-n-) and Gascon (-nn-,-n-).

> Beside palatal evolution, Portuguese shows many cases with l>r, as in branco "white" (<blanc-), cravo "pin" (<clavu) brando "soft" < blandu), etc.
>

This is the regular outcome of intervocalic -l- in Basque, and sporadically also of -n-. And although not std, there're also cases of [l:] > [n:].

Therefore, I'd postulate the existence of two different substrates to explain these features:
1) Palatalization of [l:] and [n:].
2) Delateralization in various forms.