From: tgpedersen
Message: 46812
Date: 2006-12-29
>But it isn't final, like it is in English. It is second to last, and
> > > > If one believes that this weird preterite is caused by loss of
> > > > the preterite -d- there's no major problem. It's just that I
> > > > can't see what phonological conditions might have caused the
> > > > loss of something with so much semantic load?
> > > It happens. E.g. the loss in late Latin of the distinction
> > > between future and perfect, leading to a need to create new
> > > tenses for both. (/b/ fell with /v/, so, e.g., amabit and amavit
> > > became indistinguishable.)
> > But the change there makes phonological sense; it's not like I'm
> > against phonologically caused loss of morphological categories on
> > principle.
>
> What extra motivation do you need for the loss of a final phoneme?
> It is such a common pattern in languages. Final /t/ is now
> regularly lost in some dialects of English.