VOVO ovvero del trattamento di wo iniziale in veneziano

In this article, following the drafting of the entry vovo ‘egg’ for the VEV – Vocabolario storico‑etimologico del Veneziano (directed by Lorenzo Tomasin e Luca D’Onghia), the diachronic evolution of the word-initial diphthong wo is analysed, both in Venetian and Friulian varieties. Two possible developments are registered: wo > vo and wo > vwo. Our proposal is to account for both these developments as instances of a fortition process. Specifically, in the second case the process is characterised not by a simple melodic change as in the first case, but rather by the spreading of the melody of the approximant w to a preceding temporal X-slot, with the resulting sequence *wwo being then phonetically re-analysed as vwo.