Uritescu, Dorin2009-09-152009-09-151997La Linguistique; 33(2): 35-440075-966Xhttp://hdl.handle.net/10315/2845The phonological change is certainly the result of the interaction of two types of factors: natural, extralinguistic factors and formal factors, i.e. factors related to the form, the organization of language. One aspect of the phonological evolution could then be seen as a continuous formalization of natural relations. It is from this perspective that we analyze the motivation of a formal constraint in some dialects of Romanian, namely the relative strength of pretonic vowels. This constraint ultimately represents the conjoint effect of two phenomena: the formalization and morphologization of a natural process and the characteristic movement of stress in Romanian.frRomanianRomanian -- PhonologyRomanian -- Phonology -- ChangeArticle