This study aims at investigating the evolution of the moraic structure from Latin to Portuguese. Latin, which presents vocalic and consonantal quantitative distinction, has the following syllable patterns: (i) light syllable, which contains a single mora (e.le.men.tum); (ii) heavy syllable, which contains two moras (bul.ga); (iii) super heavy syllable, which contains three moras according to our argument (paul.lum). Diachronically, there is a loss of quantitative distinctive among the vowels. From Latin to neo-Romance languages the moraic structure has its effects. Based on such information and on Hayes' Moraic Theory (1989), we intend to investigate the effects of such change in both languages by analyzing related phonological processes, such as diphthongization and monophthongation. Moraic Theory allows us both to identify the way moraic structures are attributed to languages and to determine which principles operate in these languages. Hayes (1989) defines a mora as a weight unit at the prosodic tier and represents the contrast between long syllables and short syllables. Also, a mora counts as a phonological position (a long segment is represented as being doubly linked). We argue that the choices made by the Portuguese language to deal with moraic structure of Latin had already been available in vulgar Latin and, according to the choices made, principles such as Stray Erasure and Parasitic Delinking, which are related to Prosodic Licensing, acted in the aforementioned change
Linguistic change; Latin; Moraic structure; Mora; Portuguese
