From: Joao S. Lopes
Message: 67926
Date: 2011-07-23
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
>
> Evidently, Latin was like German and Russian and pronounced all final syllables unvoiced.
Wasn't final <d> v. final <t> the reflection of a phonetic distinction? At some stage we seem to have final V:d > V: (attested in writing, notably for the ablative singular) but final V:t > Vt (3s of verbs).
The word-internal assimilations -bs- > -ps- and -bt- > -pt- aren't always shown in writing.
Another curiosity is the non-assimilation in the prefix abs-. Perhaps the Romans were happy with the rule <bs> = /ps/.
Richard.