19 Sardinian

Sardinian is widely regarded as the most conservative Romance language and was first used as a language for official documents in the 11th Century. Its purported conservativeness, though, does not change the fact that various innovative and peculiar features are found in the language. Traditionally, the internal classification of Sardinian admits two main varieties (Logudorese and Campidanese), but in phonological terms a much richer variation is observed. The language is especially well-known for its weakening processes (e.g. intervocalic lenition), but it also includes forms of strengthening (e.g. phono-syntactic doubling) as well as several assimilation processes affecting conso-nants in final coda position. As for vowels, we find metaphony and the so-called ‘vowel-zero alternation’, i.e. the insertion of different types of epenthetic vowels in certain contexts.