*V: An Optimality-Theoretic Examination of Vowel Loss Phenomena, With Special Reference to Latin, Early Western Romance, and Basque

Abstract

Remaining individual chapters of the dissertation focus on syncope and final-syllable vowel loss data attested in Gallo-Roman and Old French (chapter 4) and in Old Spanish (chapter 5), and on vowel-loss patterns in two syncopating dialects of Basque, Salacenco and Bortzerrieta (chapter 6). Throughout, an OT analysis of the data is offered, which takes the varying details of vowel loss in the range of languages/dialects examined as stenuning from different rankings of *V vis-a-vis other important constraints on syllable and metrical structure, so that in some instances we observe vowel loss which is quite restrained and "orderly," whereas in other cases, when *V comes to outrank some of the other constraints, we witness vowel loss which becomes drastic in its repercussions on the resulting output structures.