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In the Romance languages, metaphony was an early vowel mutation process that operated in all Romance languages to varying degrees, raising (or sometimes diphthongizing) certain stressed vowels in words with a final /i/ or /u/ or a directly following /j/. This is conceptually similar to the umlaut process so 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 == Metaphony in the southern Italian languages (those to the south of Tuscany) is triggered by final /i/ and /u/. High-mid vowels /e o/ are raised to /i u/, and low-mid vowels are either raised to or diphthongized to .〔 Metaphony is not triggered by final /o/. The main occurrences of final /i/ are as follows: * The plural of nouns in ''-o'' (< nominative plural ''-ī''). * The plural of nouns in ''-e'' (either a regular development of third-declension plural ''-ēs'', or from analogical plural ''-ī''). * The second-person singular present tense (a regular development of ''-ēs'' in verbs in ''-ere, -ēre, -īre'', and analogical in verbs in ''-āre''; in Old Italian, the regular ending ''-e'' is still found in ''-are'' verbs). * The first-person singular past indicative (< ''-ī''). The main occurrences of final /o/ are as follows: * The first-person singular present indicative (< ''-ō''). * Masculine "mass" nouns, and "neuter" (mass-noun) demonstratives (disputed origin). The main occurrence of final /u/ is in masculine "count" nouns (< ''-um''). Metaphony in the northern Italian languages (those to the north of Tuscany) is triggered only by final /i/. In these languages, as in Tuscan, final /u/ was lowered to /o/; this evidently happened prior to the action of metaphony. In these languages, metaphony also tends to apply to final /a/, raising it to or /e/. In most Italian languages, most final vowels have become obscured (in the south) or lost (in the north), and the effects of metaphony are often the only markers of masculine vs. feminine and singular vs. plural. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Metaphony (Romance languages)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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