Re: Re[7]: [tied] Gemination in Celtic

On Wed, 2 Apr 2008 02:46:19 -0700 (PDT), Rick McCallister
<gabaroo6958@...> wrote:

>How and why did the prothetic e- arise in French,
>Spanish, etc.?
>In Italian it exists as the phenomenon of "s impuro"
>where you use lo before /sC/.

The prothetic vowel in std. Italian used to be i- (<in
iscola>, now obsolete).

>Was Romance /s/ apical? Would that have caused the
>need of a prothetic vowel?

Latin /s/ was laminal, as it was borrowed into Basque as
laminal <z>, not apical <s>. Apical /s/ came to predominate
in Northern Iberian and Southern Gaulish Romance, but I
don't think it has anything to do with the addition of
prothetic e- (i-).

>Why /e-/ and not some other vowel?

There is i- in Italian (and Turkish). Welsh y- (/&/) derives
from *i, but I'm not sure if the shift predates the adoption
of Latin borrowings.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
miguelc@...