Metaphony (Romance languages)
In the Romance languages, metaphony was an early vowel mutation process that operated in all Romance languages to varying degrees, raising certain stressed vowels in words with a final or or a directly following. This is conceptually similar to the umlaut process characteristic of the Germanic languages. Metaphony is most extensive in the Italo-Romance languages, and applies to nearly all languages of Italy. However, it is absent from Tuscan, and hence from Standard Italian.
Italo-Romance languages
| Unaffected | Mutated |
| "I put" | "you put" |
| "this " | "this " |
| "modest " | "modest " |
| "I preach" | "you preach" |
| "flower" | "flowers" |
| "wife" | "husband" |
| "he dies" | "you die" |
| "depressed " | "depressed " |
| Unaffected | Mutated |
| "foot" | "feet" |
| "light " | "light " |
| "I think" | "you think" |
| "month" | "months" |
| "he puts" | "you put" |
| "woods" | "woods " |
| "big " | "big " |
| "I move" | "you move" |
| "coal" | "coals" |
| "alone " | "alone " |
| "he runs" | "you run" |
Metaphony in central and southern Italo-Romance affects stressed mid-vowels if the following syllable contains or. As a general rule, the high-mids are raised to, and the low-mids are raised to or diphthongized to. Metaphony is not triggered by final. The main occurrences of final are as follows:
- The plural of nouns in -o.
- The plural of nouns in -e.
- The second-person singular present tense.
- The first-person singular past indicative.
- The first-person singular present indicative.
- Masculine "mass" nouns, and "neuter" demonstratives.
Metaphony in the northern Italian languages is triggered only by final. In these languages, as in Tuscan, final was lowered to ; it evidently happened prior to the action of metaphony. In these languages, metaphony also tends to apply to final, raising it to or.
In most Italian languages, most final vowels have become obscured or lost, and the effects of metaphony are often the only markers of masculine vs. feminine and singular vs. plural.
Western Romance languages
In all of the Western Romance languages, metaphony was triggered by a final, raising mid-high stressed vowels to high vowels. Examples:vīgintī "twenty" > *vigintī > PIR > Italian venti; but > pre-PWR > PWR > Old Spanish veínte, Old Portuguese veínte, Old French vint.fēcī, fēcit "I did, he did" > Italian feci, fece; but > pre-PWR > > PWR > Old Spanish fize, fezo, Portuguese fiz, fez, Old French fis, fist.Astur-Leonese
In some of the Astur-Leonese dialects, in northern Spain, a distinction between mass and count nouns appeared at an early stage. Count nouns from Latin masculines preserved the -u from Latin accusative, while mass nouns from Latin masculines were marked by -o. In addition, Astur-Leonese marked masculine plurals with .In this situation, only masculine singular count nouns developed metaphony, as they were the ones marked with a, and mass nouns and plurals, marked with, did not. This ending system has been preserved in only central Asturian dialects. Unlike metaphony, which is considered dialectal, it has also been included in the standard version of Asturian.
However, at later stages, Eastern Astur-Leonese dialects lost the u/o distinction in noun gender markers. Some of those dialects also lost metaphony and the noun count/mass distinction altogether, keeping it only in their pronoun systems, others, such as Pasiegu from Eastern Cantabria closed all their mid-vowels in word ending syllables, and relied on metaphony as a means for distinguishing mass/count nouns.
Some Astur-Leonese dialects also presented i-triggered metaphony. It is also considered dialectal, and it is most prevalent in imperatives, preterites and demonstratives. Sometimes it prevents diphthongization by closing the mid vowel in the verbal stem.
Portuguese
Raising of to by a following final occurs sporadically in Portuguese. Example: porcum, porcōs "pig, pigs" > Proto-Ibero-Romance > Portuguese porco vs. porcos ; novum, novōs, novam, novās "new " > PIR > Portuguese novo vs. novos, nova, novas. In this case, Old Portuguese apparently had in the singular vs. in the plural, despite the spelling ⟨-o -os⟩; a later development has raised plural to. Furthermore, the mass/count distinction is expressed very differently: Only a few "mass neuter" demonstratives exist, and they have a higher rather than lower vowel ", isto "this " vs. este "this. In addition, the original pattern has been extended to some nouns originally in.Metephony on present tense and imperative verbs also occurs.