12. Syncope of Final Syllables.—It is possible that the frequent but
far from universal syncope of final syllables in Latin (especially
before -s, as in mēns, which represents both Gr. μένος and Sans.
matís = Ind.-Eur. mn̥tís, Eng. mind) is due also to this law operating
on such combinations as bona mēns and the like, but this has not
yet been clearly shown. In any case the effects of any such phonetic
change have been very greatly modified by analogical changes.
The Oscan and Umbrian syncope of short vowels before final s
seems to be an independent change, at all events in its detailed
working. The outbreak of the unconscious affection of slurring
final syllables may have been contemporaneous.
13. In post-Plautine Latin words accented on the ante-antepenult:—
(i.) suffered syncope in the short syllable following the accented syllable (bálineae became bálneae, puéritia became puértia (Horace), cólumine, tégimine, &c., became cúlmine, tégmine, &c., beside the trisyllabic cólumen, tégimen) unless
(ii.) that short vowel was e or i, followed by another vowel (as in párietem, múlierem, Púteoli), when, instead of contraction, the accent shifted to the penult, which at a later stage of the language became lengthened, pariétem giving Ital. parḗte, Fr. paroi, Puteóli giving Ital. Pozzuṓli.
The restriction of the accent to the last three syllables was completed by these changes, which did away with all the cases in which it had stood on the fourth syllable.
14. The Law of the Brevis Brevians.—Next must be mentioned another great phonetic change, also dependent upon accent, which had come about before the time of Plautus, the law long known to students as the Brevis Brevians, which may be stated as follows (Exon, Hermathena (1903), xii. 491, following Skutsch in, e.g., Vollmöller’s Jahresbericht für romanische Sprachwissenschaft, i. 33): a syllable long by nature or position, and preceded by a short syllable, was itself shortened if the word-accent fell immediately before or immediately after it—that is, on the preceding short syllable or on the next following syllable. The sequence of syllables need not be in the same word, but must be as closely connected in utterance as if it were. Thus mṓdō became módŏ, vŏlūptā́tēm became vŏlŭ(p)tā́tem, quī́d ēst? became quid ĕst? either the s or the t or both being but faintly pronounced.
It is clear that a great number of flexional syllables so shortened would have their quantity immediately restored by the analogy of the same inflexion occurring in words not of this particular shape; thus, for instance, the long vowel of ā́mā and the like is due to that in other verbs (pulsā, agitā) not of iambic shape. So ablatives like modō, sonō get back their -ō, while in particles like modo, “only,” quōmodo, “how,” the shortened form remains. Conversely, the shortening of the final -a in the nom. sing. fem. of the a-declension (contrast lūnă with Gr. χωρᾱ́) was probably partly due to the influence of common forms like eă, bonă, mală, which had come under the law.
15. Effect on Verb Inflexion.—These processes had far-reaching effects on Latin inflexion. The chief of these was the creation of the type of conjugation known as the capio-class. All these verbs were originally inflected like audio, but the accident of their short root-syllable, (in such early forms as *fúgīs, *fugītū́rus, *fugīsḗtis, &c., becoming later fúgĭs, fugĭtū́rus, fugĕrḗtis) brought great parts of their paradigm under this law, and the rest followed suit; but true forms like fugīre, cupīre, morīri, never altogether died out of the spoken language. St Augustine, for instance, confessed in 387 A.D. (Epist. iii. 5, quoted by Exon, Hermathena (1901), xi. 383,) that he does not know whether cupi or cupiri is the pass. inf. of cupio. Hence we have Ital. fuggīre, morīre, Fr. fuir, mourir. (See further on this conjugation, C. Exon, l.c., and F. Skutsch, Archiv für lat. Lexicographie, xii. 210, two papers which were written independently.)
16. The question has been raised how far the true phonetic shortening appears in Plautus, produced not by word-accent but by metrical ictus—e.g. whether the reading is to be trusted in such lines as Amph. 761, which gives us dedisse as the first foot (tribrach) of a trochaic line “because the metrical ictus fell on the syllable ded-”—but this remarkable theory cannot be discussed here. See the articles cited and also F. Skutsch, Forschungen zu Latein. Grammatik und Metrik, i. (1892); C. Exon, Hermathena (1903) xii. p. 492, W. M. Lindsay, Captivi (1900), appendix.
In the history of the vowels and diphthongs in Latin we must distinguish the changes which came about independently of accent and those produced by the preponderance of accent in another syllable.
17. Vowel Changes independent of Accent.—In the former category the following are those of chief importance:—
(i.) ĭ became ĕ (a) when final, as in ant-e beside Gr. ἀντί, trīste besides trīsti-s, contrasted with e.g., the Greek neuter ἴδρι (the final -e of the infinitive—regere, &c.—is the -ĭ of the locative, just as in the so-called ablatives genere, &c.); (b) before -r- which has arisen from -s-, as in cineris beside cinis, cinisculus; serō beside Gr. ἴ(σ)ημι (Ind.-Eur. *si-sēmi, a reduplicated non-thematic present).
(ii.) Final ŏ became ĕ; imperative sequere = Gr. ἔπε(σ)ο; Lat. ille may contain the old pronoun *so, “he,” Gr. ὁ, Sans. sa (otherwise Skutsch, Glotta, i. Hefte 2-3).
(iii.) el became ol when followed by any sound save e, i or l, as in volō, volt beside velle; colō beside Gr. τέλλομαι, πολεῖν, Att. τέλος; colōnus for *quelōnus, beside inquilīnus for *en-quēlenus.
(iv.) e became i (i.) before a nasal followed by a palatal or velar consonant (tingo, Gr. τέγγω; in-cipio from *en-capio); (ii.) under certain conditions not yet precisely defined, one of which was i in a following syllable (nihil, nisi, initium). From these forms in- spread and banished en-, the earlier form.
(v.) The “neutral vowel” (“schwa Indo-Germanicum”) which arose in pro-ethnic Indo-European from the reduction of long ā, ē or ō in unaccented syllables (as in the -tós participles of such roots as stā-, dhē-, dō-, *stətós, *dhətós, *dətós) became a in Latin (status con-ditus [from *con-dhatos], datus), and it is the same sound which is represented by a in most of the forms of dō (damus, dabō, &c.).
(vi.) When a long vowel came to stand before another vowel in the same word through loss of i̭ or ṷ, it was always shortened; thus the -eō of intransitive verbs like candeō, caleō is for -ēi̭ō (where the ē is identical with the η in Gr. ἐφάνην, ἐμάνην) and was thus confused with the causative -eiō (as in moneō, “I make to think,” &c.), where the short e is original. So audīuī became audīī and thence audiī (the form audīvī would have disappeared altogether but for being restored from audīveram, &c.; conversely audieram is formed from audiī). In certain cases the vowels contracted, as in trēs, partēs, &c. with -ēs from ei̭es, *amō from amā(i̭)ō.
18. Of the Diphthongs.
(vii.) eu became ou in pro-ethnic Italic, Lat. novus: Gr. νέος, Lat. novem, Umb. nuviper (i.e. noviper), “usque ad Changes of the diphthongs independent of accent. noviens”: Gr. (ἐν-)νέα; in unaccented syllables this -ov- sank to -u(v)- as in dḗnuō from dḗ novō, suus (which is rarely anything but an enclitic word), Old Lat. sovos: Gr. ἑ(ϝ)ός.
(viii.) ou, whether original or from eu, when in one syllable became -ū-, probably about 200 B.C., as in dūcō, Old Lat. doucō, Goth, tiuhan, Eng. tow, Ind.-Eur. *deṷcō.
(ix.) ei became ī (as in dīcō, Old Lat. deico: Gr. δείκ-νυμι, fīdo: Gr. πείθομαι, Ind.-Eur. *bheidhō) just before the time of Lucilius, who prescribes the spellings puerei (nom. plur.) but puerī (gen. sing.), which indicates that the two forms were pronounced alike in his time, but that the traditional distinction in spelling had been more or less preserved. But after his time, since the sound of ei was merely that of ī, ei is continually used merely to denote a long ī, even where, as in faxeis for faxīs, there never had been any diphthongal sound at all.
(x.) In rustic Latin (Volscian and Sabine) au became ō as in the vulgar terms explōdere, plōstrum. Hence arose interesting doublets of meaning;—lautus (the Roman form), “elegant,” but lōtus, “washed”; haustus, “draught,” but hōstus (Cato), “the season’s yield of fruit.”
(xi.) oi became oe and thence ū some time after Plautus, as in ūnus, Old Lat. oenus: Gr. οἰνή “ace.” In Plautus the forms have nearly all been modernized, save in special cases, e.g. in Trin. i. 1, 2, immoene facinus, “a thankless task,” has not been changed to immune because that meaning had died out of the adjective so that immune facinus would have made nonsense; but at the end of the same line utile has replaced oetile. Similarly in a small group of words the old form was preserved through their frequent use in legal or religious documents where tradition was strictly preserved—poena, foedus (neut.), foedus (adj.), “ill-omened.” So the archaic and poetical moenia, “ramparts,” beside the true classical form mūnia, “duties”; the historic Poeni beside the living and frequently used Pūnicum (bellum)—an example which demonstrates conclusively (pace Sommer) that the variation between ū and oe is not due to any difference in the surrounding sounds.
(xii.) ai became ae and this in rustic and later Latin (2nd or 3rd century A.D.) simple ē, though of an open quality—Gr. αἴθος, αἴθω, Lat. aedēs (originally “the place for the fire”); the country forms of haedus, praetor were edus, pretor (Varro, Ling. Lat. v. 97, Lindsay, Lat. Lang. p. 44).
19. Vowels and Diphthongs in unaccented Syllables.—The changes of the short vowels and of the diphthongs in unaccented syllables are too numerous and complex to be set forth here. Some took place under the first-syllable system of accent, some later (§§ 9, 10). Typical examples are pepErci from *péparcai and ónustus from *ónostos (before two consonants); concIno from *cóncano and hospItIs from *hóstipotes, legImus beside Gr. λέγομεν (before one consonant); SicUli from *Siceloi (before a thick l, see § 17, 3); dilIgIt from *dísleget (contrast, however, the preservation of the second e in neglEgIt); occUpat from *opcapat (contrast accipit with i in the following syllable); the varying spelling in monumentum and monimentum, maxumus and maximus, points to an intermediate sound (ü) between u and i (cf. Quint. i. 4. 8, reading optumum and optimum [not opimum] with W. M. Lindsay, Latin Language §§ 14, 16, seq.), which could not be correctly represented in spelling; this difference may, however, be due merely to the effect of differences in the neighbouring sounds, an effect greatly obscured by analogical influences.
Inscriptions of the 4th or 3rd century, B.C. which show original -es and -os in final syllables (e.g. Venerĕs, gen. sing., nāvebos abl. pl.) compared with the usual forms in -is, -us a century later, give us roughly the date of these changes. But final -os, -om, remained after -u- (and v) down to 50 B.C. as in servos.
20. Special mention should be made of the change of -rĭ- and -ro- to -er- (incertus from *encritos; ager, ācer from *agros, *ācris; the
