Phonetics and phonology of Romance languages: Occitan

This chapter details the phonological system of southern Gallo-Romance, or Oc-citan, a language traditionally spoken throughout the south of France and in parts of Spain and Italy. It begins by outlining the external history of the language, its principal dialects and sub-dialects, the glottonyms used to refer to the language, and its representation in written form; supra-dialectal groupings are also pro-posed. The historical linguistic developments that characterize the major dialects and supra-dialectal groupings are then presented, before a detailed discussion of the modern consonantal, vocalic, and glide/diphthong inventories. Within the discussion of the modern phonological system, extensive information on the phonetic realization of phonemes across geographical space is provided. Finally, the suprasegmental phonology of Occitan is presented, including stress place-ment, prosodic organization, nuclear configurations and applications, and con-tact-induced prosodic change