Variant patterns of sibilant debuccalization in Camuno

What is it about?

Modern day Italy is one of the most linguistically diverse areas of Western Europe. Nearly a hundred distinct Romance varieties are spoken, all descendants of Latin. Each variety has a slightly different accent or pronunciation from the next: one dialect has a final vowel that is dropped farther north; one town says /u/ where another has a fronted /y/; one village pronounces an /h/-sound where neighbors down the mountain say /s/ instead; and the list goes on. Differences of this kind are consequences of two central forces of language change: natural sound change that arises from the way we speak and perceive speech; and language contact, where one language influences the pronunciation of another. In this study, these two forces are shown to play a role in the shift of s > h in Camuno, an Eastern Lombard language. While this sound change is common and natural throughout the world, a long period of contact with Longobardic, an extinct West Germanic language, may have also played a role.

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Why is it important?

It is the first study that provides an account and an explanation for the shift s > h in a Romance language.