sound changes
In historical linguistics, a sound change is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chang ...
from
Classical Latin
Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a Literary language, literary standard language, standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It formed parallel to Vulgar Latin around 75 BC out of Old Latin ...
is provided below. Their precise order is uncertain.
General changes
* is lost without a trace in all positions.
**If that results in a collision of identical short vowels, they simply form the corresponding long vowel, as in > .
*Final (unstressed) is lost without a trace (except, likely, for lengthening, visible in the outcomes of ''-um'' and ''-im'', see for details) in polysyllabic words, as in > .
**In (stressed) monosyllables it tends to survive as , as in > > Spanish .
*Clusters consisting of a stop followed by a
liquid consonant
In linguistics, a liquid consonant or simply liquid is any of a class of consonants that consists of rhotics and voiced lateral approximants, which are also sometimes described as "R-like sounds" and "L-like sounds". The word ''liquid'' seems ...
draw the stress position forward, as in > .;
**Two apparent counterexamples are and , judging by the
Old French
Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th
* is lost before fricatives
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
, leaving the preceding vowel lengthened (but no longer nasalised), as in > .
** is often retained or later restored if it belongs to a prefix (''in-'' or ''con''-) or to a word which has forms where a fricative does not follow , as in > French , thanks to related forms such as the infinitive > French '.
*Sequences of two generally merge to a single long , as in > .
*In some outlying rural areas, the diphthongs and reduce to and respectively in Classical times. Influence from such dialects made a wiktionary:Latin_terms_with_variable_monophthongization">number of Latin words acquire monophthongized variants early on, as in or . Most words, however, remain unaffected by this.
**Later, 'mainstream' Latin experiences a general monophthongization of to , and of to , and remains intact in most cases, as in > .
* turns to the fricative , as does original in intervocalic position, as in > .;
**Intervocalic in contact with a rounded vowel tends to disappear, as in > > .
***It is often restored if other forms of the word have a non-rounded vowel following , as in the nominative plural .
*In
hiatus
Hiatus may refer to:
* Hiatus (anatomy), a natural fissure in a structure
* Hiatus (stratigraphy), a discontinuity in the age of strata in stratigraphy
*''Hiatus'', a genus of picture-winged flies with sole member species '' Hiatus fulvipes''
* G ...
, unstressed
front vowels
Front may refer to:
Arts, entertainment, and media Films
* ''The Front'' (1943 film), a 1943 Soviet drama film
* '' The Front'', 1976 film
Music
*The Front (band), an American rock band signed to Columbia Records and active in the 1980s and e ...
become , and unstressed
back vowels
The human back, also called the dorsum (: dorsa), is the large posterior area of the human body, rising from the top of the buttocks to the back of the neck. It is the surface of the body opposite from the chest and the abdomen. The vertebral ...
become , as in > .
**The same process also affects stressed front and back vowels in hiatus if they are
antepenultimate
In linguistics, the ultima is the last syllable of a word, the penult is the next-to-last syllable, and the antepenult is third-from-last syllable. In a word of three syllables, the names of the syllables are antepenult-penult-ultima.
Etymology
Ul ...
(in the third-to-last syllable of a word). When is produced, primary stress shifts to the following vowel, but when is produced, primary stress shifts instead to the preceding syllable, as in > .
**If is formed after a geminate consonant, it is deleted, as in > > .
** is deleted before unstressed back vowels, as in > > .
*** is occasionally deleted before unstressed non-back vowels as well, as in > > .
***Similarly, is delabialized to before back vowels, whether they are stressed or not, as in > .
**If those changes result in sequences of or , they merge to and respectively, as in > > .
**If forms after , the resulting simplifies and delabializes to , as in > > .
* raises before or , as in > > Italian , (not *''coi'', *''foi'').
* before
vocalizes
Vocalization or vocalisation may refer to:
*Speech, communication using the human voice
**Vocable, an utterance that is not considered a word
**Speech production, the processes by which spoken sounds are made
*Animal communication, the transfer of ...
to , as in > .
* is reduced to before or after a consonant or at the end of words of more than one syllable, as in > .
**Intervocalically, it sometimes metathesizes to , as in > .
*Words beginning with receive an initial supporting vowel , unless they are preceded by a word ending in a vowel, as in > .
**The earliest unambiguous attestations occur in inscriptions of the second century AD. In some languages, such as
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many countries in the Americas
**Spanish cuisine
**Spanish history
**Spanish culture
...
, word-initial remains phonologically forbidden to this day. In other Romance varieties, such as
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
**Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
**Romanian cuisine, traditional ...
, the supporting vowel seems to have been abandoned early on, resulting in restoration of initial . Although there is barely any direct inscriptional evidence of the supporting vowel in Latin inscriptions in the Balkans, its development and subsequent loss is considered to be indirectly attested by the dropping of word-initial before in cases in which it was not originally a supporting vowel, as in Romanian 'to dust', from . Compare also > * > Italian , ; French , ''.''
* and before are raised, respectively, to and , as in > > Italian '', ''.
*Compound verbs stressed on a prefix are usually reconstructed according to their prefixless equivalent, with their stress shifted forward from the prefix, as in > *, by analogy with the simplex form .
** simply yields (rather than *), perhaps because the verb, while recognisable as a compound, was not easy to identify with the original .
**Some words such as 'fasten' are apparently not recognised as compounds at all and so remain unchanged.
*Monosyllabic nouns ending in a consonant receive an
epenthetic
In phonology, epenthesis (; Greek ) means the addition of one or more sounds to a word, especially in the first syllable ('' prothesis''), the last syllable ('' paragoge''), or between two syllabic sounds in a word. The opposite process in whi ...
final , as in > > > French '. (Compare > French '.)
*Phonemic vowel length gradually collapses via the following changes (which only affect vowel length, not quality; this process appears to have been finished by the 5th century, compare ):
**Long vowels shorten in unstressed syllables.
**Long vowels shorten in stressed closed syllables.
**Short vowels lengthen in stressed open syllables.
*On account of the above, the vowel inventory changes from to , with pre-existing differences in vowel quality achieving phonemic status and with no distinction between original and . Additionally:
**Unstressed and merge into and respectively.
**In the second syllable of words with the structure ŒÏƒÏƒËˆÏƒÏƒ and merge into and respectively.
*Word-internal merges into a preceding consonant and palatalises it, as in > > > Italian .
Sporadic changes
*Vowels other than are often
syncopated
In music, syncopation is a variety of rhythms played together to make a piece of music, making part or all of a tune or piece of music off-beat (music), off-beat. More simply, syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of ...
in unstressed word-internal syllables, especially in contact with liquid consonants or, to a lesser extent, nasal consonants or , as in > .
**In a few words, unstressed initial syllables followed by experience syncope, as in > .
**If this results in being followed by a consonant, it may vocalize to , as in > > * > Italian ''fòla'' (cf. Romanian ''faulă'').
**If syncope results in , the cluster is generally replaced by , as in > .
*In cases where a long vowel precedes a geminate consonant, one of the elements often shortens unpredictably, sometimes leading to such doublets as > > Spanish ', '; French ', '.
**Long vowels sometimes shorten early on in closed syllables even if followed by two different consonants, leading to variations such as > > Italian ', Spanish '.
**Conversely, the cluster may lengthen preceding vowels early on, as in > > .
* Pretonic vowels sporadically assimilate to or dissimilate from the stressed vowel of the following syllable.;
** can dissimilate to before a following , as in > .
** can dissimilate to before a following , as in > .
** can dissimilate to before a following , as in > .
** can dissimilate to before a following back vowel, as in > .
** can assimilate to a following , as in > .
** can assimilate to a following , as in * > *.
** can assimilate to a following , as in > *.
* and may yield a low-mid vowel if followed by , as in > > Italian ', Sardinian '.
* may yield a
mid vowel
A mid vowel (or a true-mid vowel) is any in a class of vowel sounds used in some spoken languages. The defining characteristic of a mid vowel is that the tongue is positioned approximately midway between an open vowel and a close vowel.
Other n ...
if preceded by , as in > *.
* assimilates to a following in a number of cases, as in > .
**After a long vowel, the resulting reduces to , as in > .
*Initial and sometimes voice, as in > .
**This is particularly frequent with borrowings from Greek. ', ' > * > Italian ', '.
* sometimes assimilates to , as in the alternation ''.''
*There is occasional loss or assimilation of final , but it is nowhere regular until a much later period.
*When two neighbouring syllables each contain , one frequently dissimilates to or is deleted.
See also
*
Appendix Probi
The ("Probus' Appendix") is the conventional name for a series of five documents believed to have been copied in the seventh or eighth century in Bobbio, Italy. Its name derives from the fact that the documents were found attached to a copy of ...
Palatalization in the Romance languages
Palatalization (sound change), Palatalization in the Romance languages encompasses various historical sound changes which caused consonants to develop a Palatal consonant, palatal articulation or secondary articulation, as well as certain further d ...