PERCEPTUAL EXPLORATION OF AO IN DIACHRONIC AL > AU > AO > O.

The goal of the paper is to explore, by means of perceptual data, one of the possible intermediate steps, AO (Menéndez Pidal, 1968), in the diachronic sound change AL > AU > AO > O. AO is usually placed after the change AL > AU, as in Middle French (Bretos & Tejedor, 2015) and Middle Castilian (Menéndez Pidal, 1968). Ohala (1981) states that many sound change processes find their root in acoustic similarity, leading to signal misperception by the listener. Interestingly, AL and AU share similar acoustic information that can be misinterpreted (Recasens, 1996). In order to explore signal misperception in AL > AU > AO, and paying special attention to the transition AU and AO, ten subjects had to listen to the following stimuli AL, AO and AU uttered by a female Eastern Catalan speaker at two different speech rates, fast and slow. Subjects were forced to choose between AL, AU and AO in order to specifically explore AU categorization by the participants. Results show that AU can be perceived as AO. If AU is perceived as AO, then it may also be produced as such (Ohala, 1981), thus finding an opening for AO to emerge as another candidate in the sound change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]