10. _The Latin Accent._--It will be convenient to begin with some
account of the most important discovery made since the application of
scientific method to the study of Latin, for, though it is not
strictly a part of phonology, it is wrapped up with much of the
development both of the sounds and, by consequence, of the inflexions.
It has long been observed (as we have seen § 4, iv. above) that the
restriction of the word-accent in Latin to the last three syllables of
the word, and its attachment to a long syllable in the penult, were
certainly not its earliest traceable condition; between this, the
classical system, and the comparative freedom with which the
word-accent was placed in pro-ethnic Indo-European, there had
intervened a period of first-syllable accentuation to which were due
many of the characteristic contractions of Oscan and Umbrian, and in
Latin the degradation of the vowels in such forms as _accentus_ from
_ad_ + _cantus_ or _praecipitem_ from _prae_ + _caput_- (§ 19 below).
R. von Planta (_Osk.-Umbr. Grammatik_, 1893, i. p. 594) pointed out
that in Oscan also, by the 3rd century B.C., this
first-syllable-accent had probably given way to a system which limited
the word-accent in some such way as in classical Latin. But it
remained for C. Exon, in a brilliant article (_Hermathena_ (1906),
xiv. 117, seq.), to deduce from the more precise stages of the change
(which had been gradually noted, see e.g. F. Skutsch in Kroll's
_Altertumswissenschaft im letzten Vierteljahrhundert_, 1905) their
actual effect on the language.
11. _Accent in Time of Plautus._--The rules which have been
established for the position of the accent in the time of Plautus are
these:
(i.) The quantity of the final syllable had no effect on accent.
(ii.) If the penult was long, it bore the accent (_amabamus_).
(iii.) If the penult was short, then
(a) if the ante-penult was long, it bore the accent (_amabimus_);
(b) if the ante-penult was short, then
(i.) if the ante-ante-penult was long, the accent was on the
ante-penult (_amicítia_); but
(ii.) if the ante-ante-penult was also short, it bore the accent
(_cólumine, puéritia_).
_Exon's Laws of Syncope._--With these facts are now linked what may be
called Exon's Laws, viz:--
_In pre-Plautine Latin_ in all words or word-groups of four or more
syllables whose chief accent is on one long syllable, a short
unaccented medial vowel was syncopated; thus *_quínquedecem_ became
*_quínqdecem_ and thence _quíndecim_ (for the -_im_ see § 19),
*_súps-emere_ became *_súpsmere_ and that _sumere_ (on -_psm- v.
inf._) *_súrregere_, *_surregémus_, and the like became _surgere_,
_surgémus_, and the rest of the paradigm followed; so probably _validé
bonus_ became _valdé bonus_, _exterá viam_ became _extrá viam_; so
*_supo-téndo_ became _subtendo_ (pronounced _sup-tendo_), *_aridére_,
*_avidére_ (from _aridus_, _avidus_) became _ardére_, _audére_. But
the influence of cognate forms often interfered; _posterí-die_ became
_postrídie_, but in _posterórum_, _posterárum_ the short syllable was
restored by the influence of the trisyllabic cases, _pósterus_,
_pósteri_, &c., to which the law did not apply. Conversely, the nom.
*_áridor_ (more correctly at this period *_aridos_), which would not
have been contracted, followed the form of _ardórem_ (from
*_aridórem_), _ardére_, &c.
The same change produced the monosyllabic forms _nec_, _ac_, _neu_,
_seu_, from _neque_, &c., before consonants, since they had no accent
of their own, but were always pronounced in one breath with the
following word, _neque tántum_ becoming _nec tantum_, and the like. So
in Plautus (and probably always in spoken Latin) the words _nemp(e)_,
_ind(e)_, _quipp(e)_, _ill(e)_, are regularly monosyllables.
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 _mens_, which represents both Gr. [Greek: menos]
and Sans. matís = Ind.-Eur. _mntís_, Eng. _mind_) is due also to this
law operating on such combinations as _bona mens_ 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.