Articulatory Grounding of Southern Salentino Harmony Processes

Southern Salentino has a harmony process, where the stressed mid vowels /E, O/ are raised to mid-high vowels /e, o/ when followed by -i or -u. We studied this process by combining acoustic analyses with ultrasound tongue imaging. The main result of our study is that the Southern Salentino harmonic adjustments in height, which are acoustically manifested in the differentiation of F1, are articulatorily correlated with tongue root advancement when the process is triggered by -i and with tongue body raising when the process is triggered by -u. We propose a phonological analysis of the process based on these findings.