The Foundations of Latin

In this article, we examine the details and dating of the mergers of Latin ı, e into e ̣ and u˘, o into o ̣. While these mergers have long since been recognised as a matter of historical fact within the broader development of Latin into Romance, their micro-level mechanics present several problems. By re-examining the available evidence from various empirical and theoretical perspectives, we argue that the mergers were the result of two phonological processes: the rise of peripherality distinctions in the vowel system on the one hand and the loss of contrastive vowel length in the fifth century AD on the other. 1 The authors wish to thank Andreas Opfermann and Michael Mazzola for reading and commenting drafts of this article. We also wish to thank the editor, James Clackson, and the two anonymous reviewers for useful suggestions and corrections. All remaining errors are our own.

Section: Previous Analysesmentioning

confidence: 99%

On The Mergers Of Latin Close‐Mid Vowels

Leppänen

Alho

2018

“…Lat nē , prō vs. Skt ná , prá , OCS ne , pro etc. with inherited short vowels (see Baldi : 258; Le Feuvre : 129–30) and a similar development in West Germanic (see Hill 2017b: 144–5). The Lithuanian lengthening did not affect the fem.…”

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confidence: 96%

The Development of Prefixation in Time and Space

Hill

Kölligan

Scheungraber

et al. 2019

The paper argues that seemingly aberrant phonological developments of local adverbs that have become prepositions and verbal and nominal prefixes in Baltic, Germanic and Armenian are to be explained by the assumption of a phase of ‘ditropic’ behaviour: ‘ditropic clitics’ select as their prosodic host any stressed word preceding their syntactic host without forming a semantic unit. This enclitic behaviour of forms that in the historically attested stages of Baltic, Germanic and Armenian are prepositions and verbal and nominal prefixes is argued to explain their seemingly aberrant phonological developments: the shortening of Lithuanian (preverbal) nu‐ and pri‐ beside (prenominal) núo‐ and príe‐ due to Leskien's law, the operation of Verner's law in Proto‐Germanic *ga‐ beside residual *ham‐ from Proto‐Indo‐European *kom‐ and of Verner's law or assimilatory voicing in Proto‐Gmc *du‐, and the behaviour of the Armenian prepositions / prefixes betraying word‐internal position e.g. in the reduction of the affricate /dz/ to /z/ in Arm z‐. After the local adverbs passed through a phase of ditropic behaviour in all three proto‐languages, the mismatch between prosody and morphosyntax was resolved by a ‘prosodic jump’, phonologically attaching the local adverbs to their semantic and syntactic hosts.

“… This change is discussed in all treatments of the history of Latin, such as Leumann (: 112), Baldi (: 285), Weiss (: 165 and elsewhere), Niedermann ([1906]: 130), Meiser (: 118), Sen (: 69, 189), to name just a few. Sen () dates the change to a somewhat later period than the previous literature but the evidence he offers is unconvincing to our mind since it relies on the etymology of a single word ( edulis ʻedibleʼ) of problematic morphology. …”

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confidence: 99%

“…The prefix dis‐ combined only with two vowel‐initial stems; the resulting forms are dirimo ʻtake apartʼ (← emo ʻtakeʼ) and diribeo ʻsort (votes)ʼ (← habeo ʻhaveʼ). The [s] of the prefix rhotacised to [r] in both; this change is likely to have taken place in the 4th century bc (see Leumann : 178; Baldi : 285; Clackson & Horrocks : 96; Weiss : 81). After this, however, dis‐ never combined with vowel‐initial stems again.…”

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confidence: 99%

Prefix Allomorphy and the Phonologisation of s‐Deletion in Latin

Cser

2019

Latin s‐final prefixes show extensive allomorphy, which can be ascribed to different diachronic processes such as the drive to maintain contrast, analogical attraction and a sound change that deleted s before voiced consonants. We argue that the latter sound change led to three different phonologisation processes due to distributional imbalance in the relevant segments as well as a simultaneous sound change that also affected s. The evidence for the competing phonologisation processes is provided by the different alternations displayed by the s‐final prefixes.