From: Miguel Carrasquer
Message: 33729
Date: 2004-08-09
>On Mon, 9 Aug 2004, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:There was no early reduction -yy- > -y-, otherwise we would
>
>> On Sun, 08 Aug 2004 08:52:37 +0100, petegray
>> <petegray@...> wrote:
>>
>> >>But illi:us and isti:us do _not_ follow the example of
>> >>e:ius, cu:ius and hu:ius.
>> >
>> >That should be eyyus, cuyyus, huyyus. The first vowel is short, the
>> >consonantal <i> is double. I rather think this supports the change -sy-
>> >> -yy.
>>
>> Yes. I was citing the Classical Latin forms, where Vjj >
>> V:j. The genitives illi:us and isti:us can also derive from
>> *istijjus, *illijjus (< *is-tosyo, *olnosyo).
>>
>> I also asked about the reduction of unstressed /a/ vs. /o/
>> in Latin. Is /a/ more resistent to reduction than /o/? I'm
>> not confident about the soundlaws governing reduced vowels
>> in Latin, but based on the reduction of fac- to fic-
>> (afficio, etc.), I'd say there is no difference between /a/
>> and /o/. So if *-osyo was reduced to *-ijjo/-i:o, *-asyo-
>> should have done the same. Is that correct?
>
>You can't mean this in an objective sense. The Latin vowel reductions are
>not shared by the other Italic languages while the loss of intervocalic
>*-y- is. Therefore the only pertinent question is whether there can have
>been a reduction *-sy- > *-yy- *-y- after non-first vowel prior to the
>loss of intervocalic yod. That makes the question about Latin vowel
>reductions irrelevant.