Re: Somewheres

On 2024-09-02, Peter Moylan <peter@pmoylan.org> wrote:

Is there a natural tendency for languages to lose final syllables or
final consonants?

If you take the big picture view, the answer is certainly yes, but
the details vary wildly.

I can't think of any examples in Germanic languages,

Take PGmc *hringaz > OE hring > PDE ring.

Proto-Germanic *-az was the counterpart to the ubiquitous Latin
ending -us, Greek -os, but it was mostly lost in West Germanic.[1]
Much later, along the way from Old English [hrɪŋɡ] to Present Day
English [rɪŋ], final [g] after [ŋ] was lost.

Strikingly, Middle English lost final -e and, inconsistenly, -en,
which is intimately tied to the collapse of the declension system.

and I don't know enough about other language families.

Proto-Slavic went through a stage where the language had only open
syllables, i.e., all syllables ended in a vowel.  Getting there
clearly entailed the loss of some syllable- and word-final consonants.

This thread has provided examples in Spanish.

Many Spanish words that end on a consonant have clearly lost a final
-e in the past, think este/ese/AQUEL vs. Portuguese este/esse/aquele.

The debuccalization of post-vocalic [s] > [h] isn't limited to final
position, though: mismo [mihmo].

French lost a lot of final consonants (in speech, but not in
writing) centuries ago.

The sound shifts from Vulgar Latin to Old French were brutal.  One
striking change is the loss of all vowels in the final syllable
other than a, which became e [ə].  In a nutshell, this is why you
have -o/-e/-a in Spanish and Italian, but -/-/-e in the corresponding
French forms.  If you look at adjectives, the Old French masculine
would then end in a consonant, the feminine in [ə]. This stage is
still preserved in the spelling.  Later, most final consonants would
drop, as well as final [ə], so in modern spoken French it's the
masculine forms that now end in a vowel and the feminine ones that
end in a consonant.


[1] If you know German, the nominative singular masculine ending
    -er of determiners and strong adjectives is from PGmc *-az.
    That Old High German conserved this but Old English didn't
    might have been another subtle factor in the collapse of English
    nominal declension.  OHG also innovated a nom. sg. neuter ending
    -eȥ (modern -es) by misanalyzing part of the stem of neuter
    pronouns as an ending.  That's two endings that could have
    remained distinct during the fall of -e and -en in Middle English
    if only Old English had had them in the first place.  Details,
    details.
--
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          naddy@mips.inka.de