Re: OT Latin final -M (was: Adpositional irregularities)

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

> Andreas Johansson wrote:
> > Quoting R A Brown <ray@...>:
> [snip]
> >>(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.
>
> I wonder why he says that. In Classical prosody of the late Republic &
> early empire, words finals ending in -m are regularly elided before a
> word beginning with a vowel. That simply does not make sense if the -m
> were still pronounced. There is IIRC also evidence from graffiti of loss
> of final -m by that date.
Checking the book again, I see I may have misinterpreted him. He writes, when
discussing change is pronunciation during the late Empire, that final /m/ was
lost "fairly early" - I took this to mean fairly early during the late imperial
period, but there really isn't anything to tell relative to what the loss was
fairly early. Maybe he meant fairly early in the history of spoken Latin.

                                               Andreas

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