That's a fine and revealing question. The tonal contour of vanden~s,
seser~s rather plainly retains that of the older forms vandenès, seserès,
while no such tenacity can be maintained for a presumed *-amùs, instead of
which we find -áms from -ámus (in the last form I mean to note only the
position of the accent, not its tone). The logical inference is either
that *-amùs never existed, or that what is retained in the present-day
tones is the prosody of the period corresponding to the older *attested*
forms -enès, -erès, -ámus. Under the second option, the possibility that
-ámus (> -áms) has replaced an even older *-amùs would then have no
bearing on the question since the form would be too old to be of
relevance. If the funny ending of the dat.pl. refused to accept the accent
in mobile words, I would certainly like to know why.
Jens
On Tue, 8 Oct 2002, Richard Wordingham wrote:
> --- In cybalist@..., Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen <jer@...> wrote:
>
> >I would get from a presumed *-omùs via attested -ómus to -óms much
> > as one gets from vandenès via vandènes to present-day vanden~s,
> though I
> > do not know a good formulation of a rule that would enable us to
> predict
> > the syncope.
>
> Why vanden~s and not **vandéns?
>
> Richard.
>
>
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