Southern Valencian

Presence of vowel harmony in Valencian.

Southern Valencian (valencià meridional) is a dialect of Valencian spoken in the south of the Valencian Community. It comprises two sub-varieties, Northern or Upper Southern Valencian (also known as proper Southern Valencian) and Southern or Lower Southern Valencian (traditionally known as Alicante's Valencian).

Southern Valencian is renowned by the presence of different types of vowel harmony.

Sub-varieties

Upper Southern Valencian

It includes all the comarques south of the Xúquer river that do not devoice the sibilants up to the line that joins the west to east the town of Biar with Busot. This dialectal zone is, broadly speaking, what we know as "General Valencian", in other words, the set of not Northern Valencian speeches that do not devoice the sibilants and do not participate of the linguistic singularity of the Lower Southern dialect.

Within the Upper Southern Valencian it is necessary to do a subdivision:

1. Inland Zone. Comarques of la Costera, la Vall d'Albaida, el Comtat and l'Alcoià, that show some distinctive features, like for example:

• The elision of final stops after nasals and liquids (camp 'field', cent 'hundred', molt 'very'); or the falling diphthong /uj/ in cuit ('boiled') and buit ('empty').
• In morphology it is almost universal the usage of es (or se) instead of mos ('we') and vos ('you') in reflexive function, like Central Valencian: es rentem, es renteu instead of mos rentem, vos renteu ('we clean ourselves', 'you clean yourselves') of the comarques of the north and the south end.

1. Coastal Zone. Comarques of la Safor and la Marina

• Where final /a/ tends to sound velar [ɒ] (xica > xic[ɒ] 'girl') and where are pronounced the stops of camp, cent, molt. Except for la Marina Baixa, [j] becomes silent in caixa ('box') and peix ('fish') and it is used the diphthong /wi/ in cuit ('boiled') and buit ('empty') (except for la Marina Baixa that pronounces it [uj] like the inland zone and Lower Southern Valencian).
• In morphology, the substitution of mos and vos for es is less extended, especially in the case of mos: mos volem 'we want us', mo(s) n'anem (often simplified to mone) 'we're leaving' (inland zone: es/se volem, se n'anem). Within the coastal subdialect, we find one of the dialectal manifestations more singular of Valencian, the Majorcanised are of la Marina Alta and Baixa, where there were established a large contingent of Majorcan colonisers during the 17th century. As a result from this insularic colonisation, a large part of the comarca of la Marina maintains several linguistic features of Majorcan, especially in the towns of la Vall de Gallinera and, in a very special way, Tàrbena, where still survives the salat article.

These are some features of the Majorcan influence of la Marina Alta and Tàrbena (la Marina Baixa):

• Final /ɾ/ is unstable in points of the region: it falls in Bolulla and Pedreguer and is unstable (or it was) in Dénia and Xàbia.
• Elision of /j/ in the digraph ⟨ix⟩: caixa > caxa, peix > pex. This elision also exists in the neighbouring region of la Safor (except in Gandia).
• Differentiated articulation of ⟨j-g⟩ and ⟨tj-tg⟩ between vowels: the affricated geminated sound of ⟨-tj-⟩/⟨-tg-⟩, /d͡ːʒ/, opposed to the simple affricate of ⟨-j-⟩/⟨-g-⟩, /d͡ʒ/, still is active in some villages of la Marina Alta (Benissa, Senija, Xaló, Teulada, etc.). In addition to this, two villages (Benissa and Senija) feature the deaffrication of ⟨-j-⟩/⟨-g-⟩ like in Majorcan and Northern Valencian.
• Apheresis of initial ⟨a⟩: nar instead of anar ('to go'), ribar instead of arribar ('to arrive').
• Pronunciation of unstressed /a/ followed by stressed /i/ as [ə]: raïm [rəˈim] ('grape'), matí [məˈti] ('morning'). Beltran states that final /a/ is close to [ə] in Benissa, Gata and Pedreguer: xica [ˈt͡ʃikə] ('girl'), mosca [ˈmoskə] ('fly').
• Vowel /ɛ/ in fr[ɛ]d ('cold') and prim[ɛ]r ('first'), reminiscing the Majorcan sound [ə].
• Move from tonic /a/ to [ɛ], tr[ɛ]ure ('take out'), m[ɛ]ula ('trap').
• Vowel closure of unstressed /a/ > [e] in nedar ('to swim') and by extension in nede ('I swim'), nedes ('you swim'), etc.
• Alternation between the unstressed sounds [a] and [e] by reminiscence of the Majorcan mid central vowel [ə]: devant (davant) 'in front', d'ecí (d’ací) 'from here', caregol (caragol) 'snail', llevor (llavor) 'seed', al gos (el gos) 'the dog', as diu (es diu) 's/he's called', famella (femella) 'female', etc.
• Remains of the insularic consonantal assimilations: etzamen (examen) 'exam', catsot (capsot) 'big headed', datsa (dacsa) 'corn', dissatte (dissabte) 'Saturday'.

Lower Southern Valencian

This dialect is called Alicante's Valencian (valencià alacantí) by some manuals of dialectology. To avoid confusion between the different dialectal realities of the comarques of this provincial demarcation, it is best using the term Southern or Lower Southern to describe the speeches that extend to the south of the line that links the settlements of Biar and Busot, that includes the south of l'Alcoià, l'Alacantí and the valleys of the river Vinalopó. In the previously mentioned zone there are a series of features that singularise this dialectal set:

• /j/ becomes silent in faixa ('strip, girdle'), reixa ('grid') and mateix ('same') > faxa, rexa and matex; like in la Safor and la Marina Alta.
• Final /ɾ/ is maintained in the coastal regions, but similar to Castellon's Valencian it falls when the verb is accompanied by enclitics pronouns: saluda(r)-te ('greet you'), endu(r)-se ('take away'). In el Camp d'Elx it also falls in the plain verbs of the second conjugation: vénce(r), córre(r).
• The diphthong of cuina is falling [uj], like in a large part of the Upper Southern Valencian dialect and also in Catalonia and the islands.
• Intervocalic /d/ not only falls in the suffixes -ada and -ador but also in -uda: grenyu(d)a ('dishevelled'), panxu(d)a ('big-bellied'), etc. In el Camp d'Elx and Guardamar almost every ⟨d⟩ between vowels is elided, also by syntactic phonetics: El Nal que ve anirem a la boa d’exa ona grenyua que viu al carre(r) (d)e la Roa (Standard Valencian: El Nadal que ve anirem a la boda d’eixa dona grenyuda que viu al carrer de la Roda) 'The following Christmas we will go to the wedding of that dishevelled woman who lives in the street of the Wheel'.
• The suffix -esa [eza] is commonly reduced to ea: bellea [beˈʎea] 'beauty'.

The region of the Valls del Vinalopó and neighbouring areas form a dialectal zone within the Lower Southern dialect with the following features:

• Final /ɾ/ elision: treballa(r), millo(r).
• Stops become silent in camp, cent and molt.
• The diphthongs /ɔw/ (phonetically [ɒw]) and /aw/ (phonetically [ɑw]) become homophones as [ɑw] (transcribed as /aw/ for simplicity). By this rule, ou ('egg') is pronounced the same as au ('bird') and pou ('well') the same as pau ('peace').
• The diphthong ⟨ui⟩ in buit and cuit is rising like in general Valencian, and it is not falling like in the rest of the Lower Souther dialect.

In morphology the Lower Southern dialect has the following features:

• The article is invariable for the masculine and the feminine: es vaques and es bous for les vaques and els bous.
• The system of demonstrative does not have ací and it only uses aquí ('here'), ahí ('there [closer]') and allà ('there [further]') (only aquí and allà by the most conservative speakers).
• The general demonstrative açò is replaced by astò and the pronoun li is changed to se in the combinations of pronouns: se la donarem, dóna-se-la instead of li la donarem ('we will give it to her'), dóna-li-la ('give it to her').
• The full forms of the pronouns me, te, se, ne, mos, vos do never reduce, including in enclitic position: me pareix que ta tia se troba malalta, posa-te la jaqueta i anem a vore-la (em pareix que ta tia es troba malalta, posa't la jaqueta i anem a vore-la) 'It seems to me your aunt is sick, put yourself a jacket and let's go to see her'.
• In verbal morphology, the desinences -am and -au from the imperative and subjunctive (digam, digau) have evolved to -em and -eu (diguem, digueu), except el Camp d'Elx, where survives the classic paradigma.

Bibliography

• Beltran i Calvo, Vicent (2000), El parlar de la Marina Alta: El contacte interdialectal valencianobalear (in Valencian), Valencia: Departament de Filologia Catalana. Universitat d'Alacant
• Beltran i Calvo, Vicent (2005), El parlar de la Marina Alta: Microatles lingüístic de la Marina Alta (in Valencian), Valencia: Departament de Filologia Catalana. Universitat d'Alacant
• Beltran i Calvo, Vicent; Segura i Llopes, Carles (2018), Els parlars valencians (in Valencian) (2nd ed.), Valencia: Publicacions Universitat de València, ISBN 978-84-9134-240-3
• Colomina i Castanyer, Jordi (1991), El valencià de la Marina Baixa. Estudis del valencià actual (in Valencian), Valencia: Conselleria de Cultura, Educació i Ciència. Generalitat Valenciana
• Recasens i Vives, Daniel (1996) [1991], Fonètica descriptiva del català: assaig de caracterització de la pronúncia del vocalisme i el consonantisme català al segle XX, Biblioteca Filològica (in Catalan), vol. 21 (2nd ed.), Barcelona. Spain: Institut d'Estudis Catalans, ISBN 978-84-7283-312-8
• Sanchis i Guarner, Manuel (2005), La llengua dels valencians (in Valencian) (20 ed.), Valencia: Edicions 3 i 4, ISBN 84-7502-082-8
• Saborit i Vilar, Josep (2009), Millorem la pronúncia (in Valencian), Acadèmia Valenciana de la Llengua
• Veny i Clar, Joan (1983), Els parlars catalans (in Catalan), Palma: Moll, ISBN 9788427304222