Contacte lingüístic i entonació a Sardenya. Contact, variation and change in Romance and beyond

Abstract. Catalan has been spoken in the Sardinian city of l’Alguer (Alghero in Italian) ever since the city was conquered by the Crown of Aragon in 1354 and subsequently repopulated by Catalan-speakers from different areas. This Catalan koiné was later modified by Sardinian, both as a language of contact and as L1 of many immigrants to the city. This Catalan variety is also said to have been modified by standard Italian, especially from the second half of the 20th century. This paper is concerned with the effects that language contact between Algherese Catalan and Sardinian may have exerted on the intonational phonology of Algherese, as evidenced in recordings of the speech of 176 speakers (7 Algherese speakers, 9 Sardinian speakers and 160 Catalan speakers from outside l’Alguer). Data analysis shows that the seven nuclear configurations described for Sardinian are also found in Algherese and are associated with the same linguistic functions. However, half of these nuclear configurations are also present in the varieties of Catalan spoken outside l’Alguer. In addition, we note a pattern that seems to be specific to Algherese. This is the tonal configuration L+H* !H% used in the so-called vocative chant, in which the nuclear accent L+H* can be associated with the first syllable in disyllabic truncated vocatives (e.g., MaL+H*ri’!H%!, MiL+H*que’!H%!). This tonal association seems to suggest that the first syllable of the truncated vocative is the stressed syllable on the surface. These data show that Algherese, as a contact variety, has not only been influenced by neighbouring languages but is also undergoing language-internal changes.