Vowel deletion before sibilant-stop clusters in Latin: issues of syllabification, lexicon and diachrony

Syncope of a short vowel before a cluster ( : stop; : or ) is attested in Latin and Sabellic: Latin (beside ), , , Oscan ,  , Umbrian , . This phenomenon raises important questions both for the historical phonology of the Italic languages and for the typological study of -clusters. In Latin and Sabe...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of Latin linguistics 2021-10, Vol.20 (2), p.191-237
Main Authors: Machajdíková, Barbora, Buzássyová, Ľudmila Eliášová
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Apocope and syncope
Consonants
Diachronic analysis
Diachronic linguistics
extrasyllabic /s
Fricatives
Haplology
historical phonology
Italic languages
Language typology
Latin language
Onset (Phonology)
Oscan
Phonology
sibilants
Stops
Syllabification
syllable
Syllables
syncope
Umbrian
vowel deletion
Vowels
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Summary:Syncope of a short vowel before a cluster ( : stop; : or ) is attested in Latin and Sabellic: Latin (beside ), , , Oscan ,  , Umbrian , . This phenomenon raises important questions both for the historical phonology of the Italic languages and for the typological study of -clusters. In Latin and Sabellic, syncope normally took place only in open syllables. Three competing strategies are possible in order to explain this paradox. (i) It has been argued that the cluster was an onset, which would imply that the vowel standing before the cluster was in an open syllable . (ii) It has been proposed that the sequence behaves as a single consonant. (iii) It could be assumed that the syncope did not take place in a closed syllable if the closing consonant was (or its allophone ). Furthermore, a careful study of the relevant material shows that in some Latin words a vowel standing before may have been deleted by a phonological process distinct from the syncope (haplology, -rule).
ISSN:2194-8739
2194-8747
DOI:10.1515/joll-2021-2005