Re: Adpositional irregularities

Quoting R A Brown <ray@...>:

> Some will no doubt remember from their school days that the adposition
> _cum_ "(together) with", while normally a well-behaved preposition, got
> suffixed to the personal pronouns: mecum (with me), tecum (with the,
> with you), nobiscum (with us), uobiscum (with you [pl]), secum (with
> himself, with herself, with themselves). They are written this rather
> than as separate words, since the suffixing of -cum changed the stress
> of _nobis_ and _uobis_, thus: nobis /'no:bi:s/, _but_ nobiscum
> /no:'bi:scu(m)/
>
> (the final -m was silent, but some think the vowel was nasalized in
> compensation. Others think it was just silent. I'm inclined to agree
> with the latter FWIW)
What period are you talking about here? Tore Jansson, in his popular book on the
history of Latin, dates the loss of final /m/ to the later Empire.

                                                          Andreas

Reply