(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. _paréete_, Fr.
_paroi_, _Puteóli_ giving Ital. _Pozzuoli_.
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 _modo_ became _módo_, _voluptatem_
became _volu(p)tatem_, _quid est?_ became _quid est?_ 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 _ama_ and the like is due to that in
other verbs (_pulsa_, _agita_) not of iambic shape. So ablatives like
_modö_, _sono_ get back their -_o_, while in particles like _modo_,
"only," _quomodo_, "how," the shortened form remains. Conversely, the
shortening of the final -_a_ in the nom. sing. fem. of the
_a_-declension (contrast _luna_ with Gr. [Greek: chôrã]) was probably
partly due to the influence of common forms like _ea_, _bona_, _mala_,
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 *_fúgis_, *_fugiturus_,
*_fugisetis_, &c., becoming later _fúgis_, _fugiturus_, _fugeretis_)
brought great parts of their paradigm under this law, and the rest
followed suit; but true forms like _fugire_, _cupire_, _moriri_, 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. _fuggire_,
_morire_, 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.) _i_ became _e_ (a) when final, as in _ant-e_ beside Gr. [Greek:
anti], _triste_ besides _tristi-s_, contrasted with e.g., the Greek
neuter [Greek: idri] (the final -_e_ of the infinitive--_regere_,
&c.--is the -_i_ 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_; _sero_ beside Gr. [Greek:
i(s)êmi] (Ind.-Eur. *_si-semi_, a reduplicated non-thematic present).
(ii.) Final _o_ became _e_; imperative _sequere_ = Gr. [Greek:
epe(s)o]; Lat. _ille_ may contain the old pronoun *_so_, "he," Gr.
[Greek: ho], 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 _volo_, _volt_ beside _velle_; _colo_ beside Gr. [Greek:
tellomai, polein], Att. [Greek: telos]; _colonus_ for *_quelonus_,
beside _inquilinus_ for *_en-quelenus_.
(iv.) _e_ became _i_ (i.) before a nasal followed by a palatal or
velar consonant (_tingo_, Gr. [Greek: teggô]; _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 _a_, _e_ or _o_ in
unaccented syllables (as in the -_tós_ participles of such roots as
_sta_-, _dhe_-, _do_-, *_st[schwa]tós_, *_dh[schwa]tós_,
*_d[schwa]tós_) 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 _do_ (_damus_, _dabo_,
&c.).
(vi.) When a long vowel came to stand before another vowel in the same
word through loss of _^i_ or _^u_, it was always shortened; thus the
-_eo_ of intransitive verbs like _candeo_, _caleo_ is for -_e^io_
(where the _e_ is identical with the [eta] in Gr. [Greek: ephanên,
emanên]) and was thus confused with the causative -_eio_ (as in
_moneo_, "I make to think," &c.), where the short _e_ is original. So
_audiui_ became _audii_ and thence _audii_ (the form audivi would have
disappeared altogether but for being restored from _audiveram_, &c.;
conversely _audieram_ is formed from _audii_). In certain cases the
vowels contracted, as in _tres_, _partes_, &c. with -_es_ from
_e^ies_, *_amo_ from _ama(^i)o_.