Eliott wrote:
> Luca ániyë
> This is evident in prosody... prevocalic ending m was dropped:
>
> You're right of course, but one has to wonder why final -m
> drops out in the example given:
>
> foied vino pipafo cra carefo = classical: hodie vinum bibam cras carebo
> "Today I will drink wine and tomorrow I will lack it"
>
> Where the -m is not prevocalic. It could be that Roman poets
> knowlingly limited a wide spread rule of -m deletion to occur only
> before vowels. I'll try to find out more about this ....
Yup. Probably in educated speech it was common to delete the -m only before
vowels, while it was preserved in other contexts, or maybe in other
contexts it 'renforced' the following consonant:
vinum bibam pronounced as /vinu bbibam/
Luca
> Elliott
>
> Passer deliciae meae puellae
> quicum ludere, quem in sinu tenere
> (Catullus, carmen II)
>
> was realized as (stressed vowels bear grave accent):
>
> pàsser dèliciàe meàe puèllae
> quìcum lùdere qu___ìn sinù tenère.
>
> The metrical pattern is here falecian endecasyllable.
>
> Luca