Catalan phonology

The phonology of Catalan, a Romance language, has a certain degree of dialectal variation. Although there are two standard dialects, one based on Eastern Catalan and one based on Valencian, this article deals with features of all or most dialects as well as regional pronunciation differences. Various studies have focused on different Catalan varieties; for example, Wheeler (1979) and Mascaró (1976) analyze Central Eastern varieties—the former focusing on the educated speech of Barcelona and the latter focusing more on the vernacular of Barcelona— and Recasens (1986) does a careful phonetic study of Central Eastern Catalan.

Catalan shares features with neighboring Romance languages (Italian, Sardinian, Occitan, Spanish).

Consonants

Consonants of Catalan

		Bilabial	Labio- dental	Dental/ Alveolar	Palatal	Velar
Nasal		m		n	ɲ	ŋ
Plosive	voiceless	p		t	(c) ~ k
	voiced	b		d	(ɟ) ~ ɡ
Affricate	voiceless			(ts)	tʃ
	voiced			(dz)	dʒ
Fricative	voiceless		f	s	ʃ
	voiced		(v)	z	ʒ
Trill				r
Tap				ɾ
Approximant					j	w
Lateral				l	ʎ

Phonetic notes:

• According to Recasens, among the coronal consonants, /t/ and /d/ are denti-alveolar, having both dental and alveolar contact with the tongue. /n/, /l/, and /ɾ/ are "front alveolar;" /s/, /z/, and /r/ are "back alveolar" (or postalveolar); /ʎ/ and /ɲ/ are "front alveolo-palatal." There is some confusion in the literature about the precise phonetic characteristics of /ʃ/, /ʒ/, /tʃ/, and /dʒ/; while Recasens & Pallarès and Recasens & Espinoza describe them as "back alveolo-palatal," implying that the characters ‹ɕ ʑ tɕ dʑ› would be more accurate, they (and all literature on Catalan) use the characters for palato-alveolar affricates and fricatives while using ‹ɕ ʑ› for alveolo-palatal sounds in examples in other languages like Polish or Chinese. Otherwise, sources, like Carbonell & Llisterri, generally describe them as "postalveolar."
• Voiced obstruents undergo final obstruent devoicing so that fred ('cold', m. s.) is pronounced with a [t] while fredes ('cold', f. pl.) is pronounced with [ð].

Plosives

Voiced plosives become lenited [β ð ɣ] (that is, fricatives or approximants of the same place of articulation) "only in syllable onsets, after continuants." Exceptions include /d/ after lateral consonants and /b/ after /f/: ull de bou [ˈuʎ də ˈβɔw] ('round window'); bolígraf boníssim [buˈɫiɣɾəv buˈnisim] ('excellent ballpoint'). In the coda position, these sounds are always realized as plosives except in Valencian, where they are lenited.

/b/ and /ɡ/ may be geminated in certain environments (poble [ˈpɔbbɫə] 'village', regla [ˈreɡɡɫə] 'rule').

In Majorcan varieties, /k/ and /ɡ/ become [c] and [ɟ] word-finally and before front vowels; in some of these dialects, this has extended to all environments except before liquids and back vowels [ˈbanʲc] ('bench').

Affricates

The phonemic status of affricates is dubious; after other consonants, affricates are in free variation with fricatives, e.g. clenxa [ˈkɫɛnʲtʃə] ~ [ˈkɫɛnʲʃə] ('hair parting') and may be analyzed as either single phonemes or clusters of a stop and a fricative.

• Alveolar affricates occur the least of all affricates.
  • [dz] only occurs intervocalically.
  • Instances of [ts] arise mostly from compounding; the few lexical instances arise from historical compounding. For instance, potser [puˈtse] ('maybe') comes from pot ('may') + ser ('be' inf). As such, [ts] does not occur word-initially (other than some rare words of foreign origin like tsar, 'tsar', but it may occur word-finally and quite often in cases of heteromorphemic (i.e. across a morpheme boundary) plural endings: tots [tots] ('everybody').
• The distribution of alveolo-palatal affricates ([tʃ] and [dʒ]) depends on dialect:
  • In Standard Eastern Catalan, word-initial [tʃ] is found only in a few words of foreign origin (txec 'Czech') while being found freely intervocalically and word-finally.
  • Standard Eastern Catalan also only allows [dʒ] in intervocalic position. Phonemic analyses show word-final occurrences of /dʒ/, but final devoicing eliminates this from the surface.
  • In various other dialects (as well as in emphatic speech), [tʃ] occurs word-initially and after another consonant to the exclusion of [ʃ]. These instances of word-initial [tʃ] seem to correspond to [ʃ] in other dialects, including the standard (on which the orthography is based): xinxa ('bedbug'), pronounced [ˈʃinʲʃə] in the standard, is [ˈtʃinʲtʃə] in these varieties.
  • Similarly, in most of Valencia and southern Catalonia, most occurrences of [dʒ] correspond to the voiced fricative [ʒ] in Standard Eastern Catalan.

There is dialectal variation in regards to affricate length, with long affricates occurring in both Eastern and Western dialects such as in Majorca and specific Northern and Southern Valencian areas and short affricates being otherwise widespread throughout Valencia. Also, intervocalic affricates are predominately long, especially those that are voiced or occurring immediately after a stressed syllable (metge [ˈmed.dʒə] 'medic').

Fricatives

/v/ occurs in Balearic, as well as in Alguerese, standard Valencian and some areas in southern Catalonia. Everywhere else, it has merged with /b/. In Majorcan, [v] and [w] are in complementary distribution, with [v] occurring before vowels (e.g. blava [ˈbɫavə] 'blue' fem. vs blau [ˈbɫaw] 'blue' masc.). In other varieties that have both sounds, they are in contrast before vowels, with neutralization in favor of [w] before consonants.

In some Valencian dialects, /s/ and /ʃ/ are auditorily similar such that neutralization may occur in the future. That is the case of Northern Valencian where /ʃ/ is depalatalized to [jsʲ] or [js] as in caixa ('box'). Central Valencian words like mig ('half') and lleig have been transcribed with [ts] rather than the expected [tʃ], and Southern Valencian /tʃ/ "has been reported to undergo depalatalization without merging with [ts]" as in passets ('small steps') versus passeig ('promenade').

In Aragon and Central Valencian (the so called apitxat) voiced fricatives and affricates are missing (i.e. /z/ has merged with /s/, /dʒ/ has merged with /tʃ/, with only voiceless realizations occurring) and /v/ has merged with the [b]~[β] set.

Sonorants

While "dark" (velarized) [ɫ] may be a positional allophone of /l/ in most dialects (such as in the syllable coda), /l/ is dark irrespective of position in Eastern dialects like Majorcan and standard Eastern Catalan.

The distribution of the two rhotics /r/ and /ɾ/ closely parallels that of Spanish. Between vowels, the two contrast but they are otherwise in complementary distribution: in the onset, [r] appears unless preceded by a consonant; different dialects vary in regards to rhotics in the coda with Western Catalan generally featuring [ɾ] and Central Catalan dialects like those of Barcelona or Girona featuring a weakly trilled [r] unless it precedes a vowel-initial word in the same prosodic unit, in which case [ɾ] appears.

In careful speech, /n/, /m/, and /l/ may be geminated (e.g. innecessari [innəsəˈsaɾi] 'unnecessary'; immens [imˈmɛns] 'huge'; il·lusió [iɫɫuˈzio] 'illusion'). A geminated /ʎʎ/ may also occur (e.g. espatlla [əsˈpaʎʎə] 'shoulder'). Wheeler (1979) analyzes intervocalic [r] as the result of gemination of a single rhotic phoneme (this is similar to the common analysis of Spanish and Portuguese rhotics).

Vowels

Vowels of Standard Eastern Catalan, from Carbonell & Llisterri (1999:62)

Most varieties of Catalan possess seven vowel phonemes (see chart at right). However, central and western varieties differ in their incidence of /e/ and /ɛ/, with /e/ appearing much more frequently in western Catalan. In unstressed syllables, only [i], [ə] and [u] can occur: /e/, /ɛ/, and /a/ are reduced to [ə] while /o/ and /ɔ/ are reduced to [u] in most eastern varieties.

In Western Catalan dialects, [e], [o], and [a] may appear in unstressed syllables as well.

In most of Balearic Catalan [ə] appears in stressed position (generally corresponding to [ɛ] in central Catalan, that is, there are eight different vowel phonemes, as demonstrated in the contrasting series:

• sec /ˈsək/ ('dry')
• séc /ˈsek/ ('fold')
• sec /ˈsɛk/ ('I sit')
• sac /ˈsak/ ('bag')
• soc /ˈsɔk/ ('clog')
• sóc /ˈsok/ ('I am')
• suc /ˈsuk/ ('juice')
• sic /ˈsik/ ('sic, mark an error').

In most of Majorca island [o] appears in unstressed position as well, that is, /o/ and /ɔ/ are reduced to [o].

Diphthongs

There are also a number of phonetic diphthongs, all of which begin (rising diphthongs) or end (falling diphthongs) in [j] or [w].

Catalan diphthongs

[aj]	aigua	'water'	[aw]	taula	'table'
[əj]	mainada	'children'	[əw]	caurem	'we will fall'
[ɛj]	remei	'remedy'	[ɛw]	peu	'foot'
[ej]	rei	'king'	[ew]	seu	'his/her'
			[iw]	niu	'nest'
[ɔj]	noi	'boy'	[ɔw]	nou	'new'
			[ow]	pou	'well'
[uj]	avui	'today'	[uw]	duu	'he/she is carrying'
[ja]	iaia	'grandma'	[wa]	quatre	'four'
[jɛ]	veiem	'we see'
			[we]	següent	'following'
[jə]	feia	'he/she was doing'	[wə]	aigua	'water'
			[wi]	pingüí	'penguin'
[jɔ]	iode	'iodine'	[wɔ]	quota	'payment'
[ju]	iogurt	'yoghurt'

In standard Eastern Catalan, rising diphthongs (that is, those starting with [w] or [j]) are only possible in the following contexts:

• [j] in word initial position, e.g. iogurt.
• Both occur between vowels as in veuen and veien.
• In the sequences [ɡw] or [kw] and vowel, e.g. guant, quan, ungüent, qüestió (these exceptional cases even lead some scholars to hypothesize the existence of rare labiovelar phonemes /ɡʷ/ and /kʷ/).

Processes

There are certain instances of compensatory diphthongization in Majorcan so that /ˈtroncs/ ('logs') (in addition to deleting the palatal plosive) develops a compensating palatal glide and surfaces as [ˈtrojns] (and contrasts with the unpluralized [ˈtronʲc]). Diphthongization compensates for the loss of the palatal stop (segment loss compensation). There are other cases where diphthongization compensates for the loss of point of articulation features (property loss compensation) as in [ˈaɲ] ('year') vs [ˈajns] ('years').

The dialectal distribution of compensatory diphthongization is almost entirely dependent on the dorsal plosive (/k~c/) and the extent of consonant assimilation (whether or not it's extended to palatals).

Voiced affricates are devoiced after stressed vowels in dialects like Eastern Catalan where there may be a correlation between devoicing and lengthening (gemination) of voiced affricates: metge ('doctor') /ˈmeddʒə/ → [ˈmettʃə]. In Barcelona, voiced plosives may be geminated and devoiced (poble [ˈpɔppɫə] 'village').

Assimilation

Sonorants

Nasal			Lateral
word	IPA	gloss	word	IPA	gloss
ínfim	[ˈiɱfim]	'lowest'
anterior	[ən̪təɾiˈo]	'previous'	altes	[ˈaɫ̪təs]	'tall' (f. pl.)
engegar	[əɲʒəˈɣa]	'to start (up)'	àlgid	[ˈaʎʒit]	'decesive'
sang	[saŋ(k)]	'blood'
sagna	[ˈsaŋnə]~[ˈsagnə]	'he bleeds'
cotna	[ˈkonːə]	'rind'	atles	[ˈaɫːəs]~[ˈadɫəs]	'atlas'
sotmetent	[sumːəˈten]	'submitting'	motlle	[ˈmɔʎːə]	'spring, mold'

Catalan denti-alveolar plosives can be assimilated to the following consonant (gemination), especially before nasal and lateral consonants. Such thing is covered in the Catalan orthography in instances like cotna ('rind'), motlle/motle ('spring'), setmana ('week').While learned words can altern voiced and unvoiced plosives with assimilation; atles [ˈadɫəs]~[ˈaɫːəs], administrar [ədminisˈtɾa]~[əmːinisˈtɾa]. In Balearic such assimilations can go further ahead, occurring before other sonorant consonants; e.g. parla [paɫːə] 'speech'.

Central Valencian feature /t d/ elision in many of these cases; e.g cotna [ˈkona], sotmetent [someˈten], setmana [seˈmana] but keeps plosives in learned words, such as atles [ˈadles] and administrar [administɾaɾ].

Prosody

Stress

Stress most often occurs on any of the last three syllables of a word. Compound words and adverbs formed with |ˈment| may have more than one stressed syllable (e.g. parallamps [ˌpaɾəˈʎams] 'lightning conductor'; bonament [ˌbɔnəˈmen] 'willingly') but every lexical word has just one stressed syllable.

Phonotactics

Any consonant, as well as [j] and [w] may be an onset. Clusters may consist of a consonant plus a semivowel (C[j], C[w]) or an obstruent plus a liquid. Some speakers may have one of these obstruent-plus-liquid clusters preceding a semivowel, e.g. síndria [ˈsin.dɾjə] ('watermelon'); for other speakers, this is pronounced [ˈsin.dɾi.ə] (i.e. the semivowel must be syllabic in this context).

Word-medial codas are restricted to one consonant + [s] (extra [ˈɛks.tɾə]). In the coda position, voice contrasts among obstruents are neutralized. Although there are exceptions (such as futur [fuˈtuɾ] 'future'), syllable-final /ɾ/ is often lost before a word boundary or before the plural morpheme of most words: color [kuˈɫo] ('color') vs. coloraina [kuɫuˈɾajnə].

In Central Eastern Catalan, obstruents fail to surface word-finally when preceded by a homorganic consonant (e.g. /nt/ → [n]). Complex codas simplify only if the loss of the segment doesn't result in the loss of place specification.

Suffixation examples

	Final	Internal	Gloss
no cluster	[ˈkam]	[kəmˈpɛt]	'field'
	[ˈpun]	[punˈtɛt]	'point'
	[ˈbaŋ]	[bəŋˈkɛt]	'bank'
	[məˈɫaɫ]	[məɫəɫˈtɛt]	'ill, sick'
	[ˈɔr]	[urˈtɛt]	'orchard'
	[ˈɡus]	[ɡusˈtɛt]	'taste'
cluster	[ˈserp]	[sərˈpɛtə]	'snake'
	[ˈdisk]	[disˈkɛt]	'disk'
	[rəˈmɔɫk]	[rəmuɫˈkɛt]	'trailer'

When the diminutive [ˈɛt] is added to [ˈkam] it makes [kəmˈpɛt], which makes it seem as though the underlying representation is |ˈkamp| (with subsequent cluster simplification), however when the copula [ˈes] is added it makes [kəˈmes]. The resulting generalization is that this underlying /p/ will only surface in a morphologically complex word.

Word-final fricatives (except /f/) are voiced before a following vowel, e.g. bus enorme [ˈbuz əˈnormə] ('huge bus').

Word-final plosives remain voiceless no matter if they are before a following vowel, e.g. fred àrtic [ˈfɾɛˈt artik] ('arctic cold').

In Majorcan and Minorcan Catalan, /f/ undergoes total assimilation to a following consonant (just as stops do): buf gros [ˈbuɡ ˈɡɾɔs] ('large puff').

Dialectal variation

Dialectal Map of Catalan from Wheeler, Yates & Dols (1999:xviii)
Eastern dialects:
█ North Catalan
█ Central Catalan
█ Balearic and Alguerese
Western dialects:
█ North-western
█ Valencian

The differences in the vocalic systems outlined above are the main criteria used to differentiate between the major dialects: Wheeler (2005) distinguishes two major dialect groups, Western dialects and Eastern ones; the latter of which only allow [i], [ə], and [u] to appear in unstressed syllables and include North Catalan, Central Catalan, Balearic, and Alguerese. Western dialects, which allow any vowel in unstressed syllables, include northern and western Catalan, and Valencian.

Historical development

As a Romance language, Catalan comes directly from Vulgar Latin. As such, it shares certain phonological changes from Latin with other Romance languages:

• Intervocalic consonant lenition, similar to most of Western Romance languages:
  • Intervocalic sounds were often voiced (circa fifth century AD).
  • /b/ and /w/ between vowels became [β]. E.g. caballu → cavall "horse".
  • /d/ became [ð] between vowels in Iberia, Gaul, Raetia, northern Italy, and a part of Sardinia.
  • Intervocalic pretonic /ɡ/ was deleted in most words.
  • In some cases other voiced stops were lost as well. E.g. volebat → volia "s/he wanted", pavore → pahor → por "awe".
  • Geminate voiceless stops are simplified. E. g. bucca → boca "mouth", passare → passar [pəˈsa] ~ [paˈsar] "pass".
• The velars /k/ and /ɡ/ became palatalized before front vowels.
  • by the fourth century, palatalized /ɡ/ had become a palatal approximant /j/. When following a vowel and preceding a stressed vowel, this approximant became fused with the following front vowel: /maˈɡister/ → [maˈjɪster] → [maˈester] → [ˈmastiɾ]. In the Iberian peninsula, southwestern Gaul, and portions of Sardinia, Sicily, and southwestern Italy, this palatal approximant stage was retained while other dialects made different developments.
  • Palatalized /k/, which had developed a palatal offglide (i.e. [kʲj], continued to advance further forward in the mouth to become [tʲj] (which led to some confusion between /kj/ and /tj/). By the sixth or seventh century, this palatalized coronal had become an affricate ([tʲsʲ] or [ts]).
  • /sk/ was also part of this palatalization.
• Before or after another consonant /l/ was velarized (leading to l-vocalization in some dialects. After consonants, this may have led to the realization of a palatal lateral in Spanish and Italian.
• /kʷ/ became /k/ before /u/ and /o/ by the first century.
• /h/ was deleted, first when medial and then in all contexts soon after.
• /m/ and /n/ became silent word-finally (presumably after an intermediate state of being realized as the nasalization of the preceding vowel); the latter also being lost in the coda position before /s/.
• /ks/ was reduced to /s/ before or after another consonant. By analogy, the prefix ex- before vowels may have also been pronounced /es/. Later on, /ks/ was also reduced word-finally except in monosyllabic words.
• /sj/, /lj/ and /nj/ became palatal between vowels.
• stressed /e/ and /i/, when immediately followed by a vowel of the penultimate syllable, became /j/; /u/ in the same environment became /w/.
• /ss/ after diphthongs and long vowels reduced to /s/ (degeminated): /kaːssus/ → /kaːsus/. There was just general confusion in regards to geminated consonants but they were normally retained after long vowels.
• Short /i/ and /u/ became [e] and [o], probably by the first century AD. Also, vowel quantity between short mid-vowels and long mid-vowels became differentiated: /deus/ → [dɛus].
• /n/, followed by a fricative (/f/, /ʒ/, /s/, or /v/), was deleted and replaced by the lengthening of the previous vowel: /kensor/ → /tʃeːsor/.
• Eventually (in Spain and parts of Gaul), all stressed vowels were pronounced long while unstressed vowels were short. The new long vowels were pronounced in most regions with diphthongization although Portugal, southern Gaul, Lombardy, and Sicily didn’t participate in this early breaking. The vowels most affected were /ɛː/ and /ɔː/.
• Vowels were often syncopated.
  • between a labial and another consonant.
    • when such a deletion brought [aβ] to precede another consonant, it became [au].
  • between a consonant and a liquid or vice versa.
• Like Occitan, loss of Latin final unstressed vowels, except -a; and then after some of the resulting consonantic groups a support vowel -e (pronounced [e] or [ə]) appears, e. g. fame → fam "hunger"; bucca → boca "mouth"; nostru → nostre "ours".
• Loss of final -n after the demise of final unstressed vowels, e. g. manu → *man → mà "hand".
• In Oriental dialects: Latin short e → closed [e], and Latin long e → neutral vowel [ə] and then later → open [ɛ]; so the final outcome of Latin short and long e is reversed in relation to other Romance languages.
• Unlike Occitan and other Gallo-Romance languages, Catalan preserves the three degrees for rounded back vowels /ɔ o u/, and /u/ is not fronted to /y/.
• Unlike Spanish and other Iberian Romance languages, betacism or loss of b/v distinction seems to be in Catalan an innovation since the modern era.
• Like Asturian, palatalization of Latin word initial l-; e.g. luna → lluna "moon"; lupu → llop "wolf".
• Vocalization to [w] of final -d of diverse origins and the Latin verbal ending -tis: pede → peu [pɛw] "foot"; credit → creu [ˈkrɛw] "he believes"; miratis → miratz → mirau → mireu [miˈɾɛw] "you watch".

See also

• List of phonetics topics
• Catalan orthography
• Dialects of Catalan

Bibliography

• Bonet, Eulàlia; Mascaró, Joan (1997), "On the representation of contrasting rhotics", in Martínez-Gil, Fernando; Morales-Front, Alfonso (eds.), Issues in the Phonology and Morphology of the Major Iberian Languages, Georgetown University Press, pp. 103–126 {{citation}}: Missing |editor2= (help)
• Carbonell, Joan F.; Llisterri, Joaquim (1992), "Catalan", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 22 (1–2): 53–56, doi:10.1017/S0025100300004618
• Carbonell, Joan F.; Llisterri, Joaquim (1999), "Catalan", Handbook of the International Phonetic Association: A Guide to the usage of the International Phonetic Alphabet, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 61–65, ISBN 0-521-63751-1
• Grandgent, Charles Hall (1907), "Phonology", An Introduction to Vulgar Latin, D.C. Heath & Co., pp. 60–143
• Herrick, Dylan (2002), "Catalan Phonology: Cluster Simplification and Nasal Place Assimilation", in Wiltshire, Caroline & Camps, Joaquim (ed.), Romance Phonology and Variation, Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company, pp. 69–84, ISBN 1588110796{{citation}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)
• Hualde, José (1992), Catalan, Routledge, ISBN 0415054982
• Lloret, Maria-Rosa (2003), "The phonological role of paradigms: The case of insular Catalan", in Auger, Julie; Clements, J. Clancy; Vance, Barbara (eds.), Selected papers from the 33rd Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages, Bloomington, Indiana April 2003, Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins, pp. 275–297
• Mascaró, Joan (1976), Catalan Phonology and the Phonological Cycle, Massachusetts Institute of Technology {{citation}}: |format= requires |url= (help)
• Mascaró, Juan (2001), "Compensatory diphthongization in Majorcan Catalan", in Kreidler, Charles W. (ed.), Phonology: Critical Concepts in Linguistics, Taylor and Francis, pp. 580–593, ISBN 0415203473
• Padgett, Jaye (2003), Systemic contrast and Catalan rhotics, University of California, Santa Cruz{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link)
• Recasens, Daniel; Pallarès, Maria Dolores.; Dolorspallares, M (1995), "Velarization degree and coarticulatory resistance for /l/ in Catalan and German", Journal of Phonetics, 23: 37–52, doi:10.1016/S0095-4470(95)80031-X
• Recasens, Daniel; Espinosa, Aina (2005), "Articulatory, positional and coarticulatory characteristics for clear /l/ and dark /l/: evidence from two Catalan dialects", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 35 (1): 1–25, doi:10.1017/S0025100305001878
• Recasens, Daniel; Espinosa, Aina (2007), "An electropalatographic and acoustic study of affricates and fricatives in two Catalan dialects", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 37 (2): 143–172, doi:10.1017/S0025100306002829
• Veny, Joan (1989), Els parlars catalans. Síntesi de dialectologia (eighth ed.), Palma de Mallorca: Editorial Moll
• Wheeler, Max W (1979), Phonology Of Catalan, Oxford: Blackwell
• Wheeler, Max W (2005), The Phonology Of Catalan, Oxford: Oxford University Press, ISBN 0199258147
• Wheeler, Max; Yates, Alan; Dols, Nicolau (1999), Catalan: A Comprehensive Grammar, London: Routledge

External links

• A proposal for Catalan SAMPA
• Gramàtica de la llengua catalana c.
• Els sons del català c.