European language, the Accent must have carried a strong Stress (see § 69).
Change of Character in Accent
§ 66. The character of the Accent may change in a language. Thus in Greek in the 5th Century B.C. it was certainly Musical; but by the 2nd Century B.C., if not earlier, it had certainly become Exspiratory as it is in Modern Greek; hence came the lengthening of the vowel in the accented syllable, frequent in even Attic inscriptions of the 2nd Century A.D. (e.g. Σώλωνος instead of Σόλωνος C.I.A. iv. 11, written between 174 and 178 A.D.), and occurring much earlier in Greek papyri from Egypt. In Modern Greek accented vowels are regularly long.
Character of Latin Accent
§ 67. In Latin the Accented syllable was pronounced with greater Stress, but it is possible that there was some raising of the Tone also in the language of polite society. But in the everyday speech of the camps from which all the Romance languages outside Italy arose, the Stress accent was very strong. This was the cause of the remarkable contractions and mutilations that appear in some of these languages, especially in French; for example in such a word as cité from Lat. cīvitā́tem, where the stress accent on the syllable -tā- (see § 85 (4)) has helped
- (1) to suppress the syllable -vi-,
- (2) to shorten the i of cī-,
- (3) to suppress the final syllable altogether.
