Vowel Reduction in Catalan Varieties. Catalan typologies and property analysis

Abstract

Observing vowel reduction, the literature presented five main Catalan varieties, divided in broad strokes between Eastern and Western. However, our proposal for Catalan and its varieties can be established in terms of Property Theory, when working from Optimality Theory. In this thesis we propose three main properties in order to classify vowel reduction in Catalan. These properties include three faithfulness constraints (ID[high], ID[high,low] and ID[high,low,ATR]) and five markedness constraints (*Unstressed/low, *Unstressed/-high, NoSchwa, Lic-Nonperiph and Lic[MidLax]. Each property works with one of the faithfulness constraints and with all the markedness ones. Property 1 works with ID[high,low,ATR], Property 2 works with ID[high,low] and Property 3 works with ID[high]. At the same time, each property has several micro-steps to give in account the micro-variation present in all these varieties. This proposal of micro-variation, in terms of properties, permits us to describe more precisely which rankings and re-rankings we need to establish, in order to be able to define and classify all different varieties of Catalan. The results show us that each Property leads us to different main varieties that have common property values. In that sense, it is easier to classify each one of them and appreciate which varieties are related and how. The improvement of having micro-steps in each property is that we can show for each re-ranking which constraint (or constraints) is the one that needs to be re-ranked and where. In addition, this approach permits us to define and classify each variety in a unique way.