>>Yes, but this proto-Romance -a was
not stressed (and proto-Romance -o and -e had disappeared before - in Spanish
(and Italian) it's -e that has disappeared, not -o and -a). In Etruscan the
first syllable is stressed. Wouldn't this reduce the possiblity of
disappearing?
>One of the points I tried to make was
that stress is not a segmental feature but an autonomous phenomenon.
In a language with initial stress the first syllable of a word may be
reduced and deleted, while stress simply finds a new syllable to anchor to. In
Slavic, final yers were weakened and lost even if originally stressed, and
stress was retracted from them to the preceding syllable.
Piotr
OK, yes, thank you very much.
Marc