Aspectos fonéticos de la diptongación del rumano (e-paper)

The phonetic explanations of the Romanian diphthongization processes e > ea and o > oa may be subdivided into two major groups: several authors advocate the view that the change is conditioned metaphonically by specific unstressed vowels (it is often believed that the triggering unstressed vowels were [a, ə, e]); by contrast, other scholars think that these diphthongs were generated spontaneously from mid low vowels. This study analyzes experimentally the first hypothesis. Based on acoustic data for a series of invented words endowed with the structure [ˈtV1ɾV2], we analyze the coarticulatory effects exerted by several unstressed vowels on F1 and F2 of the vowels [e] and [o] in Romanian. Our results offer some support for the traditional hypothesis of metaphonic diphthongization in Romanian, though with several specificities regarding the contextual conditions and intermediate phases of the sound change. In particular, as already pointed out by some scholars, it is concluded that /e/ diphthongization could hardly have been triggered by V2 = [e]. On the other hand, it is shown that the phonetic variation linked to the V2-dependent effects may be sufficiently prominent to trigger V1 diphthongization.