Re: Greek and Sanskrit neuter plural and related questions

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Richard Wordingham" <richard@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@> wrote:
>
> > And if the Latin vowel [final -a in nominative] was always short,
> why does it remain
> > as <-e> in French while other short unstressed vowels were lost in
> > French (and Catalan, Provencal)?
>
> In French, the formerly long unstressed vowels were also lost. It
> seems to be a matter of quality - only the lowest of the unstressed
> vowels survived. (It's a bit more complicated than simply losing the
> unstressed vowels, but that;s the simples way of summmarising what
> happened.)

It's an areal thing. In auslaut -a became schwa, the other vowels were
lost in French (langue d'oil), Dutch, English(?), German and Danish
at approximately the same time.


Torsten