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R A Brown skrev:
Eric Christopherson wrote:On Aug 11, 2009, at 10:05 AM, Przemyslaw Ziobrowski wrote: [snip]A change of this kind [azd] > [az\d] or [uz] > [uz\]? It seems very unlikely. Why would the [z] palatalize after [u]?? And why would it not before the [i]? A substrate/shibboleth could be the solution.I don't see why not. /s/ > /S/ before consonant or pause, at least, happens in several languages.Yep - in Portuguese, for example.
What's bothering me is the possible phonetics of the Italian change of unstressed final vowel + -S * -AS > -e * -ES > -i * -OS > -i It may seem as if plurals like _cose, vini_ come from the Latin nominative plural, and that plurals like _piedi_ were derived from PEDES perhaps by Latin long /e:/ in final syllables becoming Vulgar Latin */i/ rather than */e/. That this is not so, but that the modern Italian plurals were derived from the Latin accusative plural by a sequence of changes like * -AS > *-ai > -e * -ES > *-ei > -i * -OS > *-oi > -i is proven by the forms which Latin monosyllables in -S take in Italian * POS(T) > poi * NOS > noi * VOS > voi * CRAS > crai * SEX > SES > sei There are also DAS > _dai_ and STAS > _stai_, but these are rendered problematic by the fact that second person singular verb forms of the -ARE conjugation get _-i_ rather that _-e_, presumably by analogy with the other conjugations. PLUS > _pi�_ rather than _**piui_ is explained as dissimilation. This leaves only TRES > _tre_ as somewhat problematic, though TREDECIM may have influenced it. _Crai_ may be surprising when one has learnt that 'tomorrow' is _domani_ in Italian, but the word exists historically and dialectally. So what happened seems clear, but *how* did it happen? What phonetic factors caused and permitted final _-Vs_, and only final _-Vs_ to change to _-Vi_? BTW Rumanian, and thus probably all of Eastern Romance is closely parallel. /BP 8^)> -- Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "C'est en vain que nos Josu�s litt�raires crient � la langue de s'arr�ter; les langues ni le soleil ne s'arr�tent plus. Le jour o� elles se *fixent*, c'est qu'elles meurent." (Victor Hugo)