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The floating C-Place node in Latin1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  06 April 2010

ANDRÁS CSER
ANDRÁS CSER*
Affiliation:
Institute of English and American Studies, Pázmány Péter Catholic University & Research Institute for Linguistics, Hungarian Academy of Sciences
*
Author's address: Institute of English and American Studies, Pázmány Péter Catholic University, Egyetem u. 1., 2081Piliscsaba, Hungary[email protected]
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Abstract

In this paper it is argued that there existed, in a certain period of the history of Latin, a floating C-Place node in some lexical items in word- and stem-initial position. Notably, this was involved in the phonological representation of the words written – in an archaising fashion – with initial 〈gn〉. Based on a thorough analysis of the Brepols Corpus (CLCLT-5) it is demonstrated that the diachronic distribution of the prefixed forms of 〈gn〉-initial stems shows restrictions that can only be explained if one assumes a geometric representation involving a floating C-Place node that remained in the place of the original velar stop inherited from Proto-Indo-European. By classical times this floating node was also lost, and thus the possibilities for combining prefixes with original 〈gn〉-initial stems expanded.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 65 - 85
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

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Footnotes

[1]

My thanks must go to Péter Szigetvári, Béla Adamik, Péter Siptár and two anonymous JL referees, who have made valuable comments on the paper during its preparation. This article was written as part of a project supported by the Bolyai Scholarship.

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