linguistics
Linguistics is the scientific study of language. The areas of linguistic analysis are syntax (rules governing the structure of sentences), semantics (meaning), Morphology (linguistics), morphology (structure of words), phonetics (speech sounds ...
, prothesis (; from post-classical
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
based on ' 'placing before'), or less commonly prosthesis (from Ancient Greek ' 'addition'), is the addition of a sound or syllable at the beginning of a word without changing the word's meaning or the rest of its
structure
A structure is an arrangement and organization of interrelated elements in a material object or system, or the object or system so organized. Material structures include man-made objects such as buildings and machines and natural objects such as ...
. A vowel or consonant added by prothesis is called prothetic or less commonly prosthetic.
Prothesis is different from the adding of a prefix, which changes the meaning of a word.
Prothesis is a
metaplasm
A metaplasm is almost any kind of alteration, whether intentional or unintentional, in the pronunciation or the orthography of a word. The change may be phonetic only, such as pronouncing ''Mississippi'' as ''Missippi'' in English, or acceptance ...
, a change in spelling or pronunciation. The opposite process, the loss of a sound from the beginning of a word, is called
apheresis
Apheresis ( ἀφαίρεσις (''aphairesis'', "a taking away")) is a medical technology in which the blood of a person is passed through an apparatus that separates one particular constituent and returns the remainder to the circulation. ...
or aphesis.
Word formation
Prothesis may occur during
word formation
In linguistics, word formation is an ambiguous term that can refer to either:
* the processes through which words can change (i.e. morphology), or
* the creation of new lexemes in a particular language
Morphological
A common method of word form ...
from
borrowing from foreign languages or the derivation from
protolanguage
In the tree model of historical linguistics, a proto-language is a postulated ancestral language from which a number of attested languages are believed to have descended by evolution, forming a language family. Proto-languages are usually unattest ...
s.
Romance languages
An example is that + stopclusters (known as '), in
Latin
Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...
, gained a preceding in early
Romance languages
The Romance languages, also known as the Latin or Neo-Latin languages, are the languages that are Language family, directly descended from Vulgar Latin. They are the only extant subgroup of the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-E ...
(
Old Spanish
Old Spanish (, , ; ), also known as Old Castilian or Medieval Spanish, refers to the varieties of Ibero-Romance spoken predominantly in Castile and environs during the Middle Ages. The earliest, longest, and most famous literary composition in O ...
,
Old French
Old French (, , ; ) was the language spoken in most of the northern half of France approximately between the late 8th Spanish and French language">French , (in which the ''s'' was later deletion (phonology)">lost) "state"/"been", and Latin ' changed to Spanish and Old French ' (Modern French ' and Italian ).
Turkic languages
Some Turkic languages avoid certain combinations of consonants at the beginning of a word. In Turkish language, Turkish, for instance, Smyrna is called İzmir, and the word , borrowed from French language, French, becomes Turkish .
Similarly, in Bashkir language, Bashkir, a prosthetic vowel is added to Russian loanwords if a consonant or a consonant cluster appears at the beginning: "rye" from Russian , "table" from Russian , "bench" from Russian , etc.
However, Bashkir presents cases of novel prothesis in terms that are inherited from Old Turkic: "falcon" from
Old Turkic
Old Siberian Turkic, generally known as East Old Turkic and often shortened to Old Turkic, was a Siberian Turkic language spoken around East Turkistan and Mongolia. It was first discovered in inscriptions originating from the Second Turkic Kh ...
velar nasal
The voiced velar nasal, also known as eng, engma, or agma (from Greek 'fragment'), is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. It is the sound of ''ng'' in English ''sing'' as well as ''n'' before velar consonants as in ''E ...
before
vowel
A vowel is a speech sound pronounced without any stricture in the vocal tract, forming the nucleus of a syllable. Vowels are one of the two principal classes of speech sounds, the other being the consonant. Vowels vary in quality, in loudness a ...
s has occurred historically: the Nenets words "road", "bow" are cognate with Hungarian ''út'', ''íj'' with the same meaning.
In some varieties of Nenets, the rule remains productive: the initial syllable cannot start with a vowel, and vowel-initial loanwords are adapted with prothetic .
Hindi
Hindi
Modern Standard Hindi (, ), commonly referred to as Hindi, is the Standard language, standardised variety of the Hindustani language written in the Devanagari script. It is an official language of India, official language of the Government ...
words from English have an initial ''i'' before ''sp-'', ''sk-'' or ''sm-'': school → ''iskuul'', special → ''ispesal'', stop → ''istahp''.
Persian
In Persian, loanwords with an initial ''sp-'', ''st-'', ''sk-'' or ''sm-'' add a short vowel ''e'' at the beginning: spray → ''esprey'', stadium → ''estadiun'', Stalin → ''Estalin'', skate → ''eskeyt'', scan → ''eskan'', etc.
Slavic languages
During their evolution from
Proto-Slavic
Proto-Slavic (abbreviated PSl., PS.; also called Common Slavic or Common Slavonic) is the unattested, reconstructed proto-language of all Slavic languages. It represents Slavic speech approximately from the 2nd millennium BC through the 6th ...
, words in some
Slavic languages
The Slavic languages, also known as the Slavonic languages, are Indo-European languages spoken primarily by the Slavs, Slavic peoples and their descendants. They are thought to descend from a proto-language called Proto-Slavic language, Proto- ...
gained a prothetic /v/ (spelled "w" in Polish).
* Proto-Slavic *okъno ("
window
A window is an opening in a wall, door, roof, or vehicle that allows the exchange of light and may also allow the passage of sound and sometimes air. Modern windows are usually glazed or covered in some other transparent or translucent ma ...
Common Czech
Czech ( ; ), historically known as Bohemian ( ; ), is a West Slavic language of the Czech–Slovak group, written in Latin script. Spoken by over 12 million people including second language speakers, it serves as the official language of the ...
internal organs
In a multicellular organism, an organ is a collection of tissues joined in a structural unit to serve a common function. In the hierarchy of life, an organ lies between tissue and an organ system. Tissues are formed from same type cells to a ...
Semitic languages
The Semitic languages are a branch of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. They include Arabic,
Amharic, Tigrinya language, Tigrinya, Aramaic, Hebrew language, Hebrew, Maltese language, Maltese, Modern South Arabian language ...
, such as
Arabic
Arabic (, , or , ) is a Central Semitic languages, Central Semitic language of the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family spoken primarily in the Arab world. The International Organization for Standardization (ISO) assigns lang ...
and
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ''ʿÎbrit'') is a Northwest Semitic languages, Northwest Semitic language within the Afroasiatic languages, Afroasiatic language family. A regional dialect of the Canaanite languages, it was natively spoken by the Israelites and ...
, regularly break up initial two-consonant clusters by adding a prothetic vowel. The vowel may be preceded by the glottal stop /ʔ/ (see
aleph
Aleph (or alef or alif, transliterated ʾ) is the first Letter (alphabet), letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician alphabet, Phoenician ''ʾālep'' 𐤀, Hebrew alphabet, Hebrew ''ʾālef'' , Aramaic alphabet, Aramaic ''ʾālap'' � ...
) or, in Hebrew, /h/, which may be pronounced or simply written.
Because of the triconsonantal root morphology of Semitic languages, the prothetic vowel may appear regularly when the first two consonants of the root lack an intermediate vowel, such as in verb conjugation: Arabic ''ʼaktubu'' (I write) from the verb ''kataba'' (root ''ktb'').
In Hebrew, prothesis occurs in nouns of Greek origin, such as ''Aplaton'' (Plato), ''itztadion'' (stadium).
Consonant mutation
Celtic languages
Modern Irish
Irish (Standard Irish: ), also known as Irish Gaelic or simply Gaelic ( ), is a Celtic language of the Indo-European language family. It is a member of the Goidelic languages of the Insular Celtic sub branch of the family and is indigenous ...
features ''t-''prothesis in certain circumstances, such as when a vowel-initial masculine noun in the singular
nominative
In grammar, the nominative case ( abbreviated ), subjective case, straight case, or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb, or (in Latin and formal variants of E ...
is preceded by the article (e.g. 'the air'); or when a feminine noun beginning with ''s-'' in the singular nominative is preceded by the article (e.g. 'the eye'). Irish also features ''h-''prothesis in certain circumstances, such as when a vowel-initial noun in the nominative plural is preceded by the article (e.g. 'the birds' (masculine), 'the ages' (feminine)). The feminine singular possessive 'her' triggers h-prothesis on vowel-initial nouns (e.g. 'her father' ), while the masculine singular possessive 'his' does not (e.g. 'his father').
Welsh features ''h''-prothesis only for vowel-initial words. It occurs in words after ' 'her', ' 'our', and ' 'their': ' 'age' ' 'her age'. It also occurs with ' 'twenty' following ''ar'' (on) in the traditional counting system: ' 'twenty-one' (literally, 'one on twenty').
Swiss German
Swiss German
Swiss German (Standard German: , ,Because of the many different dialects, and because there is no #Conventions, defined orthography for any of them, many different spellings can be found. and others; ) is any of the Alemannic German, Alemannic ...
features ''n''-prothesis if a word ends with a vowel and the next word begins with a vowel. A dropped final ''n'' was originally retained then, but the process now occurs in contexts in which ''n'' never existed. A similar process called intrusive-r occurs in some varieties of English.
Sandhi
A prothetic vowel performs external
sandhi
Sandhi ( ; , ) is any of a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on nearby sounds or the grammatical function o ...
in
Italian
Italian(s) may refer to:
* Anything of, from, or related to the people of Italy over the centuries
** Italians, a Romance ethnic group related to or simply a citizen of the Italian Republic or Italian Kingdom
** Italian language, a Romance languag ...
: compare ' ("the
school
A school is the educational institution (and, in the case of in-person learning, the Educational architecture, building) designed to provide learning environments for the teaching of students, usually under the direction of teachers. Most co ...
") vs. ' ("at school"). It is, therefore, conjectured both that the origins of the Romance prothesis are phonetical, rather than grammatical. Prothesis originally broke consonant clusters if the preceding word ended in a consonant. There was no prothesis in the Romance dialects that had lost their terminal consonants.
Second language
Phonetic rules of a
native language
A first language (L1), native language, native tongue, or mother tongue is the first language a person has been exposed to from birth or within the critical period hypothesis, critical period. In some countries, the term ''native language'' ...
may influence the pronunciation of a
second language
A second language (L2) is a language spoken in addition to one's first language (L1). A second language may be a neighbouring language, another language of the speaker's home country, or a foreign language.
A speaker's dominant language, which ...
, including various metaplasms. For example, prothesis is reported for
Crimean Tatars
Crimean Tatars (), or simply Crimeans (), are an Eastern European Turkic peoples, Turkic ethnic group and nation indigenous to Crimea. Their ethnogenesis lasted thousands of years in Crimea and the northern regions along the coast of the Blac ...
when they speak Russian.
James L. Barker writes: "If an Arab, an East Indian, a Frenchman, Spaniard, or Italian is given the following sentence to read: ''I want to speak Spanish'', he reads it in the following manner: ''I want to speak (i)/(e)Spanish''. In this case there is no 'parasitic' ''i'' or ''e'' before ''sp'' of ''speak'', but there is before ''sp'' in ''Spanish''".{{cite journal , last1=Barker , first1=James L. , title=Accessory Vowels , journal=Modern Language Notes , date=March 1925 , volume=40 , issue=3 , pages=162–164 , doi=10.2307/2914173, jstor=2914173
See also
*
Apheresis
Apheresis ( ἀφαίρεσις (''aphairesis'', "a taking away")) is a medical technology in which the blood of a person is passed through an apparatus that separates one particular constituent and returns the remainder to the circulation. ...
*
Epenthesis
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 ...