Page:The Making of Latin.djvu/61

Rh mind) is due also to this law operating on such combinations as bona mēns and the like; but the conditions of this change have not yet been clearly shown. That some such change, however, was regular in early Latin appears probable from the many examples of words which in other languages appear as -o- stems but which in Latin have been shifted to the consonantal declension; for example pons ‘causeway, bridge’ beside Gr. ‘strait, sea’ (both meaning properly ‘a crossing’—cf. Sansk. panthan-‘road’); and glans beside Gr. both meaning ‘acorn, nut’ (see §170). In many words the effects of this phonetic change, if it took place, must have been very greatly modified by analogy.

§ The second law states the syncope which took place later than the time of Plautus.

In post-Plautine spoken Latin before Cicero’s time words accented on the Ante-ante-penult suffered syncope of the short syllable following the accented syllable; bálineae became bálneae, puéritia became puértia, cólumine tégimine, etc., became cúlmine tégmine, etc. (beside the trisyllabic Nominatives cólumen, tégimen), except in the one case described in the next section.

§ When the short vowel was e or i or u followed by another vowel (as in párietem, múlierem, Púteoli) the word was not contracted, but the accent was shifted to the Penult, which at a later stage of the language became lengthened. Thus late Latin pariḗtem gave Italian parḗte, Fr. paroi; late Latin Puteṓli gave Italn. Pozzuōli. The restriction of the accent to the