2.1. Front rounded vowels in unstressed positions

While all of the examples cited above are in line with previous research, there is a considerable amount of data which goes beyond the generally accepted findings. The corpus extracted from the ALEAç comprises a relatively large number of tokens with front rounded vowels in unstressed positions. So far, the literature has exclusively concentrated on the shift in stressed vowels, leaving unstressed front rounded vowels out of the discussion.⁶ Earlier works even state that [y] was absent altogether in unstressed positions of dialectal Portuguese both in the Azores and the Algarve (Damasio 1972 [1962]). Rogers (1948) makes no mention of front rounded vowels in unstressed positions. Even though the number of unstressed front rounded vowels in the atlas is limited, it certainly isn’t coincidental. Table 2 shows the distribution of stressed vs. unstressed front rounded vowels in the corpus.

The following examples illustrate such cases in which front rounded vowels are realised in unstressed positions:

These forms are certainly less frequent when compared to stressed front rounded vowels, but unstressed [ø] accounts for almost one fourth of all instances of this vowel in the corpus, and more than one [y] in ten is in an unstressed position. This calls for further investigation as to the conditions and rules that govern the realisation of front rounded vowels in the dialect of São Miguel outside the well-known pattern in stressed positions.

The high front rounded vowel [y], for example, appears in several unexpected cases where the regular vowel shift would not necessarily trigger it since the corresponding etymological forms do not have [u] in this position:

These cases suggest that the speakers continued the vowel shift one step further than predicted, skipping the stage where [o] would turn into [u] and proceeding further to the front rounded form [y] (Blayer 2004: 48). Maia (1975: 22) reports a similar case in the dialect of Algarve, stating that “também em sílaba átona a vogal é pronunciada com um timbre bastante anterior” [“also in unstressed syllables, the vowel is pronounced with a relatively fronted timbre”]. As an example, Maia gives the phrase [yʒ ɡrãwʃ] os grãos, ‘the grains’, with the article os remaining unstressed before the stressed noun. Interestingly, Silva (2005: 12) reports that the shift from [o] to [u] appears the least frequently among the different steps of the vowel shift while the realisation of [y] instead of [u] is virtually omnipresent. Examples (13)–(15) could be interpreted as a hint that the [u] > [y] process is so influential and prominent that it overrides the less important [o] > [u] process in a few instances. This may be the case especially in instances where spelling does not interfere with pronunciation and thereby fixes the realisation of [o] due to the grapheme <o>. Some of the informants consulted for the ALEAç were indeed illiterate. In these cases, the normative character of written language is much less likely to shape the pronunciation according to what speakers consider ‘correct’ language use based on standardised forms. Unfortunately, it is impossible to deduce from the dataset whether the examples in (13), (14) and (15) were given by individuals who could not read or write or whether spelling does indeed in any way reduce the likelihood of the [o] > [y] process.

Similarly irregular cases can be noted for the mid-front rounded vowel [ø] in unstressed positions:

Neither of these forms has any of the diphthongs like [ow] or [oj] in its standard Portuguese counterpart. Example (16) is especially peculiar because it reopens a vowel that could have been expected to be a closed front rounded vowel [y] as in (11) or (12). Instead, the adjacent stressed vowel [ũ] remains unrounded and is nasalised whereas the unstressed vowel is lowered and fronted, thus differing in two features of the vowel at once while only the feature [+round] is kept. The other two forms, (17) and (18), are less spectacular as they preserve the half-open configuration, yet they change into fronted and rounded vowels contrary to the rules of the vowel shift that would predict [u] or [o] (depending on the degree of openness) instead of [ø].

The number of examples of this kind in the corpus is not sufficient to come to a conclusive result about the nature of this phenomenon. It seems, however, as though the realisation of front rounded vowels is not at all limited to stressed positions and that the sound shift provides an opportunity for these vowels to spread in the system and enhance the range of their positions. Unsurprisingly, this spread only concerns pretonic or prepretonic vowels since posttonic vowels are very often in a word-final position and hence prone to being deleted.

Whether or not these observations are indeed a sign of a spreading phenomenon would have to be examined separately by means of a diachronic study and specific data that are gathered with particular attention to unstressed front rounded vowels and their distribution. At this point, it is difficult to tell if the realisation of front rounded vowels without stress and without their regular etymological background is only an effect of rare overgeneralisation or articulatory exceptions – yet the share of almost 24% of all tokens with mid-front rounded vowels does not hint in this direction. What is more, these variants were found in all four of the São Miguel locations referenced in the ALEAç so that an individual or locally limited effect can be eliminated.

As a general rule, it seems plausible to deduce that whenever etymological [ow], [oj] or [u] are stressed, rounding is highly likely to occur in São Miguel Portuguese. Reversely, stress is not a conditio sine qua non for rounding as it can occur in unstressed syllables as well.

2.2. Rediphthongised front rounded vowels?

The realisation of [ø] instead of standard Portuguese [ow] or [oj] is usually described as monophthongisation. Yet, a considerable number of forms in the corpus present mid-front rounded vowels as parts of diphthongs, as the following examples show:

This phenomenon concerns 31 out of 55 types in which [ø] can be observed (81 tokens out of 266). This means that more than half of the etyma with mid-front rounded vowels have them as the first segment of a diphthong, usually alongside alternative variants with a monophthong [ø]. As Álvarez Pérez (2014: 45) observes for continental dialect data in the ALEPG, “it is normal for different choices to exist simultaneously, not only at the same location, but even for the same informant.” This can be seen from example (20) as compared to (2) [føs] as its counterpart of the same etymon is without a diphthong. Example (21) illustrates the fact that the same etymon can have a mid-front rounded vowel [ø] as part of both sorts of diphthongs, i.e. [øw] and [øj], just as much as [ow] and [oj] are often interchangeable in other varieties of Portuguese, including standard forms such as oiço and ouço ‘I hear’.

This calls for the question of whether the development [ow/oj] > [ew] > [ø] as known from the history of French phonology (Englebert 2015: 188–189) is the only possible explanation for the emergence of front rounded vowels in Romance languages. In this case, forms with [øw] or [øj] would indeed count as rediphthongisations. They could be accounted for as compromise forms between the typically Azorean front rounded vowel and the more continental form with the standard Portuguese diphthong. However, the parallels between Portuguese and French are limited since the latter does not exhibit the same level of alternation between [oj] and [ow] as Portuguese does. Much to the contrary, historical [oj] in French developed in a completely different direction yielding an opening diphthong [wa] as in voix ‘voice’ (Englebert 2015: 189–190), unknown to Portuguese.

If we compare the two forms [ow] and [oj] another explanation for the emergence of [ø] seems possible. In continental Portugal, both diphthongs are present and often used interchangeably, but not necessarily in equal distribution. As Coutinho (1984: 109) points out, “[n]o português moderno, ou alterna com oi, o que era estranho à língua antiga.” [“In modern Portuguese, ou alternates with oi, which was unusual in earlier stages of the language.”] This alternation, however, is probably a phenomenon that can be observed in a period prior to the settlement of the Azores: “Eventualmente a variação [entre oj e ow], em desacordo com a etimologia, ocorre desde o século XIII.” [“Maybe the variation [between oj and ow], contrary to etymology, occurs from the 13^th century on.”] (R. Silva 1991: 66.) According to Cintra (1983: 43), it is difficult to tell apart clear-cut dialectal areas in mainland Portugal for alternations between [ow] and [oj]. At any rate, the distribution between the two variants is not at all even:

“Creio que não há nenhum falar português em que o ditongo [o̩i̯] não exista, a par de [o̩u̯] ou do [o̩] proveniente da sua monotongação, pelo menos em algumas das palavras em que o i é etimológico (atraído da sílaba seguinte, como em coiro, ou proveniente da vocalização da consoante c no grupo ct como en noite); o que há é falares em que [o̩i̯] não só se manteve nos casos em que era etimológico, mas aparece em grau maior ou menor nos casos em que se esperia [o̩u̯] ou [o̩], outros em que se observa a situação inversa.”

[“I believe that there is no Portuguese variety in which the diphthong [oi] doesn’t exist, just like [o̩u̯] or [o̩] resulting from its monophthongisation, at least in some words where the i is etymological (by assimilation with the following syllable like in coiro, or by vocalisation of the consonant c in the cluster ct as in noite); what we do find are varieties in which [oi] doesn’t only persist in cases where it was etymological, but where it also appears more or less frequently in cases where we would expect [o̩u̯] or [o̩], and others where we observe the opposite situation.”] (Cintra 1983: 44).

A slight tendency that Cintra observes, though, could be a hint that [oj] is a compromise form between a monophthong and the older diphthong [ow]:

“A grande expansão da variante [o̩i̯] parece-me característica dos falares populares regionais de uma zona de fronteira entre a região em que se produz a monotongação e aquela em que se conserva o ditongo (nas suas variantes [o̩u̯] e [au̯]).”

[“It seems to me that the great expansion of the variant [o̩i̯] is typical for the regional popular varieties of a border zone between the region where there is monophthongisation and the region where the diphthong is preserved (in its variants [o̩u̯] and [au̯]).”] (Cintra 1983 : 45).

Taken together, these observations can be interpreted as a sign that [oj] is the more ‘intrusive’ variant that is supplanting [ow]. In other words, in light of diachronic and dialectological information about continental Portuguese, [ow] turning into [oj] seems more likely than [oj] becoming [ow]. From this point on, a further development from [oj] to [ø] could be seen as the following step due to the segmental structure of the diphthongs. A combination like [oj] is rather complex given that it brings together two vowels with an absolute difference in its three features while the combination [ow] presents an opposition in only one feature:

None of the three features of [oj] are identical, which means that a complete shift in articulatory configuration is necessary within the diphthong. The front rounded vowel reduces this complexity by harmonising the feature [–back] for both vowels, though at the price of introducing a typologically as well as physically marked sound:

In a similar way, the front rounded vowel in the other variant of the diphthong reduces the opposition of features, this time by harmonising the feature [+round]:

The introduction of [ø], then, evens out the feature oppositions of the two initial diphthongs [ow] and [oj], abandoning the easier articulation of [ow], but facilitating the articulation of [oj] after it was introduced and spread in the system of Portuguese. Following this step, the monophthongisation to [ø] could be the last phase while [øw] and [øj] could be the remains of the intermediate stadium. The form [ew], in contrast, seems unnecessary as a hypothesis for an intermediate step since it presents no advantage in feature symmetry over [oj]:

In terms of feature structure, [oj] and [ew] are equally complex, the only difference being that [oj] is abundantly documented in a variety of dialectological and diachronic data. Etymology and dialectological data from mainland Portugal further confirm this hypothesis since, as Brissos (2014b: 76) observes, “only those cases of historical [oj] that can be identified with contexts of historical [ow] can have a fronted o.”

Taken together with the historical and dialectological data and the feature structure of the diphthongs in question, it seems more likely that the monophthong is the final form while all diphthongs, with or without front rounded vowels, can be seen as the initial or intermediate structures. The fact that Rogers (1948: 16–17) had already attested alternate forms with [øw] and [øj] in the 1940s points in the same direction that this phenomenon is not an effect of recent language change due to the influence of standard Portuguese. In order to fully confirm this hypothesis, more data are needed, e.g. in order to test whether younger, more urban or socioeconomically more privileged and progressive speakers differ from more traditional speakers in their use of [ø] compared to [øw] and [øj].

For the sake of completeness, it should be noted that diphthongised forms with the front rounded vowel [y] are extremely rare. Only three tokens with the form [yj] are attested in the ALEAç data.

Depending on the framework one adopts, these feature sets can either be seen as configurations of articulation on a phonetic level or as their abstract representations in the speakers’ sound systems on a phonological level. For the analysis and the question of symmetry as such, both approaches are possible and equally valid. In other words, it could either be the case that feature structure provides a phonetic basis for a change in the phonological system or that the development of [ø], [øw] and [øj] can be considered a phonological process within the mental abstractions of pronunciation.

3.1. Contact or no contact?

While the principal mechanisms of the emergence of front rounded vowels in Portuguese have been described and only some additional details and background processes remain to be uncovered, the sociohistorical circumstances of these processes remain much more obscure. It has been established in the literature that front rounded vowels in São Miguel Portuguese are not a result of language contact but rather of language-internal change. Sociohistorically, Flemish influence can be excluded for São Miguel. While front rounded vowels are a prominent feature in Dutch, and Flemish settlers played an important part in the population of the Açores, their presence was marginal on the island of São Miguel (Meneses 2008: 101). The islands of Faial and São Jorge which saw a much more important influx of Flemish settlers in the 15th century do not present front rounded vowels in their dialects. In Terceira, where Flemish settlers were also present, front rounded vowels are sporadically attested, but the systemic position of this phenomenon in the island’s dialect is not yet sufficiently understood so that there is no possibility of tracing it back to a specific instance of language contact.

Blayer (2004: 50–51) sees front rounded vowels in the Azores as a feature brought by the settlers from the southern regions of continental Portugal who already produced these vowels in their respective dialects.⁷ In these regions, front rounded vowels are regular phenomena of sound evolution that are not at all uncommon in other Romance languages. So far, most explanations of these particular features of São Miguel Portuguese and similarly of those found in continental dialects focus on language-internal processes rather than language contact (Blayer 2004: 45). As a matter of fact, the sound chain causing the lowering of front vowels and raising of back vowels mentioned in the introduction appeared in these continental dialects, rather than in those of the Azores. The insular dialect of São Miguel, then, simply presents the result or continuation of this sound chain that occurred earlier on the continent.

However, a general hypothesis of contact-induced sound change has been present in linguistics for decades, explaining the presence of front-rounded vowels in Romance languages mainly through Celtic influence. Damasio (1972 [1962]: 107–109) gives an early account of different historical explanations. Crothers (1976) sketches a history of phonological contact across many language families in Eurasia, including the case of Germanic influence on Romance languages like French and Gallo-Italian dialects without, however, taking into account the dialects of Portuguese that have front rounded vowels. Fernandes (2008: 14) hypothesises that front rounded vowels in the south of Portugal might be due to the influence of an early Celtic substrate or of Frankish templars and hospitalários (Knights Hospitaller), or to a convergence effect of the two. Furthermore, the dialects in this region were marked by the contact which occurred during the southward Reconquista expansion between varieties of Portuguese and the non-Iberoromance languages of some French and Flemish settlers in this period as well as the Mozarabian, Hebrew, Berber and Arabic varieties of the local populations (Fernandes 2008: 6). Hammarström (1953: 148) makes a compelling argument against the idea of direct borrowing of /y/ in the Algarve dialects, stating that:

“le fait que la qualité antérieure n’est pas ‘stable’ (on a l’impression d’une transformation non encore achevée), de même que notre observation selon laquelle ce sont plutôt les jeunes qui présentent les voyelles les plus antérieures, plaident en faveur d’une transformation récente.”

[“the fact that the anterior quality is not ‘stable’ (it seems like a transformation that has not yet been completed), and also our observation that mostly young speakers produce the most fronted vowels, speak for a recent transformation.”]

If this is the case, then the realisation of [y] in São Miguel is particularly interesting as it is much more consistent than the fluctuant variation between [y] and [u] that Hammarström observed in southern continental Portugal in the 1950s. The process of dialect formation on the island could have stabilised a phenomenon that crystallised in the continental dialect and remained much more fluent throughout the centuries. As Brissos (2014a) and Brissos & Saramago (2014) show, the fronting of [u] is geographically much more widespread and frequent today than previous research suggested so that the exact status of [y] several centuries ago remains all the more uncertain. Yet, the frequent alternation of the monophthong [ø] with its diphthong variants contradicts the hypothesis of a ‘stabilising force’ in dialect emergence during the settlement of the Azores.

While it remains unclear which part most of the languages involved played in the development of the dialectal sound systems in the south of Portugal, it seems plausible to assume that the front rounded vowels did indeed originate in the multilingual context of pre-modern Southern Portugal and were brought to São Miguel from there. Frutuoso (1998 [1586–1590]) gives a thorough account of the first settler families to arrive in the Azores. Even though he almost exclusively focuses on noble families and leaves out the significant part of settlers from more modest origins, it becomes clear that many of the socially dominant settlers came from the Algarve and Alentejo regions.

The internal development of the vowel system described with the patterns of a sound chain might very well be linked to external influences in the preceding situation of language contact in southern continental Portugal. By ‘external influences’, we do not necessarily need to think of direct borrowing of a phoneme from an adjacent linguistic system. Such influences may just as well be situated on a more abstract level in terms of a general phase of increased systemic dynamics which might have favoured or triggered the transformations of the phoneme set. Brissos’ (2014a: 94) idea of a system-internal “exponentiation of a general tendency in the South” therefore does not necessarily contradict the assumption that language contact played a role in the emergence of front rounded vowels in these dialects. In connection with the emergence of youth vernaculars in highly multilingual cities in Africa and Europe, Wiese (in press) puts forward the idea that “the multilingual context supports a generally more dynamic setting that is beneficial for language variation and change, rather than triggering specific grammatical transfers. In this case, contact works as a boost for existing, internal tendencies, thus stimulating or facilitating change.” (See also Cheshire et al. 2011 for a similar account of language contact in Multicultural London English).

Still, this explanation leaves several questions open that are rarely addressed in research about the history of Portuguese and its dialects. First of all, the notion of ‘language contact’ which previous research on the sound system of Portuguese in the Azores dealt with is rather narrow and limits the scope of what contact actually can explain. It only raises the question whether or not front rounded vowels could have been introduced by Abstand languages⁸ of Portuguese, e.g. Dutch or French. Dialect contact seems to be excluded from what would count as ‘actual’ contact. Yet, dialect contact is exactly what is usually addressed, but not extensively discussed, in the literature. If front rounded vowels were already present in continental dialects of Portuguese and were brought to the Azores by speakers of these dialects, they must have entered into contact with other dialects – since not all settlers in the archipelago came from the same area. The same holds true for the specific case of São Miguel as the population of the island was very heterogeneous from the very beginning (Meneses 2008: 85–92). In this context of dialect contact, one may still raise the question as to why and how a particular feature could prevail. At the same time, the discussion about system-internal sound change eclipses the fact that external factors, among which contact can be an important one, could have played a significant role in stimulating or triggering the process of sound change. With regard to the different steps of the sound chain, Damasio (1972 [1962]: 113) poses the question: “[D]entro de la pura consideración estructuralista […] es evidente que todos estos hechos están relacionados; pero ¿dónde se originó el movimiento?” [“Within a purely structuralist consideration it is evident that all these facts are related, but where did this movement begin?”] This stimulation may have taken place during the founding period of the Azorean society or earlier in the regions of origin of those speakers who brought along dialects with front rounded vowels in their sound system. The front rounded vowels found in São Miguel Portuguese may, then, not be due to influence from Flemish or French, but they are nevertheless an effect of contact.⁹ As linguistics is moving away from looking at languages as discrete units with clear-cut boundaries, contact linguistics, too, has to take into account the fact that contact does not necessarily involve influences between completely different linguistic systems perceived as ‘individual’ languages. We may conceptualise the contact between different Portuguese dialects as a fairly common type of language contact which brings about similar, though maybe more subtle, effects to contact between more distant linguistic systems. A model that bridges the gap between such seemingly different types of contact is that of the feature pool described in Mufwene (2005). This concept which was developed primarily in the context of creolistics has been shown to be prolific also for the analysis of other contexts of language contact such as multi-ethnic youth languages in Europe (Cheshire et al. 2011; Wiese 2012).

3.2. Triple markedness and the feature pool in São Miguel

Even though the early (linguistic) history of the Azores is not a situation of creolisation, concepts and ideas from creolistics like the feature pool hypothesis can be transferred to this case. We have to take into account that we are not dealing with a case of colonial exploitation in the narrow sense, but the settlement of the archipelago shares some important characteristic traits with more ‘typical’ colonial situations. Both scenarios involve the strategy of permanently establishing a local population in order to secure geopolitical influence and power for political or economic reasons. In both cases, the newly founded societies have a strictly hierarchical structure from the outset. We can qualify the early history of the Azores as a sort of ‘proto-colonial’ setting.

In such a situation, a wide range of different languages were usually present due to the very diverse origins of the newly established local population. In the colonies, this population would exhibit an important share of underprivileged inhabitants like slaves or indentured labourers. In the Azores, we certainly cannot assume a system of mass slavery, but we may well take note of a clear-cut social hierarchy with an important share of persons who were brought to the islands against their will or relocated under intense pressure, e.g. mouriscos that indeed lived in conditions of slavery, Jews or newly converted Christians that fled the violence and social exclusion in continental Portugal, or other types of servants and farm labourers (Carita 2008: 56; Meneses 2008: 84–85; Campos 1985: 100–101). Additionally, the society was shaped along strict lines of social stratification with a feudal system of land division and tenancy (Frutuoso 1998 [1586–1590]: 228). The social stratification in the first decades of settlement can be seen from various historical sources that count only half of the population of São Miguel as almas de confissão (‘confessing souls’, i.e. persons who were considered capable of independent understanding and moral or confessional insight), most likely excluding both children and non-Christians from this category (Campos 1985: 136–137; see also Frutuoso 1998 [1586–1590]: 490) This division of the population suggests a clear-cut social divide in which one out of two inhabitants would have been in a less influential position.

In such conditions, the different groups would bring all the structural features of their original languages or varieties together into the so-called feature pool. The feature pool is an abstract entity that unites all the grammatical, lexical, pragmatic, and phonological representations that the new community’s individuals bring together (Mufwene 2002: 46; see also Mufwene 2001). An individual speaker does not necessarily need to have access to all of the features in the feature pool, especially at the beginning of a social transformation such as the settlement of a new territory. However, they increase the number of variants in their individual repertoire of representations as interaction with speakers of other languages or dialects intensifies. This means that the newly formed society, while developing a new common form of speech, can make use of a wide range of alternative features and select a limited number of them which will prevail as characteristics of a new set of structural rules. Ultimately, the new system will be considerably distinct from any of the initial systems that were involved. In a ‘typical’ colonial setting, this new system can be a Creole language. In the Azores, the new system was somewhat less distant from the original forms as the languages involved belonged for the most part to the same language family.

In order to establish the reasons why a particular feature is selected over another one, we have to consider the sociolinguistic conditions that are attached to the features in question. Three main factors are at play. To begin with, demographics are certainly important. A feature that is introduced by a large number of speakers will be well represented in the feature pool. In the case of São Miguel, settlers from the south of Portugal were probably the numerical majority so that the perpetuation of features from their dialects became more likely as they contributed heavily to the feature pool.

However, demographics alone cannot account for the selection of a feature. In colonial settings, the underprivileged part of the society, e.g. slaves, were usually in the demographical majority and yet, features from their languages did not prevail as frequently as one might expect. As a second factor, then, we can assume that it is much more likely that a feature will be selected due to the socio-indexical value that it carries even though it is initially only realised by a smaller part of the society. This socio-indexical value can have connotations of overt or covert prestige, depending on the social implications of the varieties in question. As Mufwene (2002: 49) observes, “each unit is learned with an interpretation of the constraints associated with its usage.” These constraints do not only encompass grammatical rules, but also pragmatic conditions of use and qualitative social norms of who uses which form in which context. In São Miguel, both quantity and quality were in favour of the front rounded vowels in the southern dialects as their speakers held a privileged position compared to the speakers of Mozarabian, Arabic, Berber or Hebrew who were usually not among the socially dominant. The third and last factor that we have to take into account is the so-called founder principle:

“Structural features of creoles have been predetermined to a large extent (but not exclusively!) by characteristics of the vernaculars spoken by the populations that founded the colonies in which they developed.” (Mufwene 1996 : 84).

We can assume that this principle also came into effect in the formative period of the São Miguel dialect. The first settlers to arrive on the island and in the entire eastern group of the archipelago were predominantly people from the south of Portugal.¹⁰ Those parts of the Azores that were more distant from the continent were populated some decades later and received their first population mainly from the centre and the north of Portugal. (Meneses 2008: 91–92) Speakers of dialects from those regions may have also arrived in São Miguel or relocated there from one of the western islands at a later stage. At that point, however, they would have entered a society where the decisive part of dialect formation was over. Their influence on the subsequent language change must have been considerably reduced and the pressure to adapt to the emerging dialect shaped by the southern continental features was probably high. Taken together, these factors contributed to a development which, until today, preserves front rounded vowels as a particularly marked feature of the dialect of São Miguel.

As mentioned in the introduction, front rounded vowels are marked in the sense that they are an exceptional phenomenon in the world’s languages (see Mufwene 2002: 54–55 for a discussion of markedness as a criterion for feature selection). At the same time, they are marked on an articulatory level. In most phonological systems, spread front vowels and rounded back vowels increase the perceptive contrast between the two vowel groups since they minimise or maximise the length of the resonating cavity. Front rounded vowels counteract this principle as rounded lips increase the oral cavity which ideally should be reduced for front vowels to be recognisable. As I have shown in chapter 2, however, the non-ideal feature structure presents the advantage of levelling asymmetries in diphthongs, at least as far as [ø] is concerned.

On a third level of markedness, front rounded vowels have a particular social-indexical value which makes up for the articulatory ‘flaws’ of this type of vowels.¹¹ The phonemes [ø] and [y] are seen as exceptional in contrast to the respective standard languages and therefore are suitable as markers of a regional or local identity. This is particularly visible in the adaptation of English loanwords by early re-migrants that used to live in the United States and returned to São Miguel (Borges 1960). These speakers frequently introduced front rounded vowels according to the phonological patterns typical for São Miguel when using English loanwords in dialectal speech. Silva (2008) shows that the maintenance of front rounded vowels is a very important marker of Azorean regional identity and origins for dialect speakers that emigrated to the United States and, even more so, for their locally born children and grandchildren. Conversely, speakers of (northern) continental Portuguese have been shown to attach a strong impression of marked dialectal speech to Azoreans, an impression which is particularly attached to the vowel system (Ferreira 2009: 257–261).

In a community with a standard variety which does not have front rounded vowels, using them is a very easily perceivable sign for localness both in basilectal structure and in regiolectal utterances. Conversely, when the standard does have front rounded vowels, using them is a sign of targeting acrolect forms. This is the case, for example, in French-based Creole languages where front rounded vowels usually are not part of the basilectal sound system but are used very frequently as soon as a speaker slightly moves towards French in their repertoire. A similar effect can be seen in dialects in the South of Germany which do not use front rounded vowels while standard German does. In Rhine Franconian dialects of German, saying gr[y]n instead of gr[i]n ‘green’ in an otherwise dialectal utterance would be perceived as a clear tendency towards the standard. The same holds true for e.g. Réunion Creole with a speaker replacing lari [i] by laru [y] ‘street’ (Bollée 1978: 32). In a more general sense, front rounded vowels can be used as productive means of differentiation between speaker groups or communicational contexts while providing sufficient warranty for a successful act of communication. In the history of the Azores, this seems to be a fundamental principle which guided the maintenance of FRV during the emergence of a new insular society.