Stressed /e/ Centralization into Schwa and Related Mid Vowel Developments in Catalan and Elsewhere in the Romania

Abstract The present study seeks to throw some light on the relative chronology of the changes /e/ > [ə] and /ɛ/ > [e] in stressed position in Old Eastern Catalan by analysing in detail the development of the stressed mid front vowels in dialects of other Romance linguistic domains in which stressed /e/ has also shifted to a mid central vowel or else to a (mid) low vowel generated possibly from an earlier schwa. Data from Ladin Rhaetoromance, Occitan and perhaps Francoprovençal dialects suggests that a chain shift occurred in Old Eastern Catalan by which /ɛ/ developed into [e] in order to fill the gap left by the centralization of stressed /e/ into [ə]. The paper also holds that the centralization of stressed /e/ into schwa must have operated after the reduction of unstressed /e/ and/or /a/ into schwa given that unstressed schwa co‐occurs with stressed schwa within the same word as a general rule in the world's languages while the presence of unstressed schwa does not imply the existence of stressed schwa.