From: fournet.arnaud
Message: 56449
Date: 2008-04-02
----- Original Message -----
From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
>Was Romance /s/ apical? Would that have caused the
>need of a prothetic vowel?
=========
Old French tends to be a CvCv language
with complex vowels but no clusters.
#s-C is therefore not acceptable
and must be fixed into e(s)C-
Arnaud
========
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?
========
The schwa in (old) French used to be
the same as /e/.
It's now /รถ/.
Arnaud
============