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Stefano Canalis
The Piedmontese dialect of Piverone exhibits a peculiar vowel height harmony process, in which word-final vowels alternate between high and mid depending on the height of the stressed vowel. This harmony occurs in both paroxytones and proparoxytones, although the penultimate vowel in the latter does not alternate in height. The seemingly non-local nature of harmony in proparoxytones is argued to depend on the role of metrical structure in determining the harmony domain. Drawing on evidence from neutralization and syncope phenomena, the penultimate vowel of proparoxytones is interpreted as occupying a metrically weak position, which also accounts for its transparency to vowel harmony. The same mechanism in paroxytones and proparoxytones percolates an ‘openness’ component from the word stress node to the immediately lower metrical node to its right, ignoring the penultimate vowel in proparoxytones due to its weak metrical status.
