prothesis (was: isle > ile?)

At 1:19 pm -0500 16/1/01, John Cowan wrote:
>Christophe Grandsire wrote:
>
>> épée <- Old French espee
>> <- Latin (ill)a spatha (with wrong cut)
>
>Actually, the first e in epee is not from the article, but
>is from the same principle that prefixes e to all initial s+stop in
>Spanish today.  This sound-law (status > estat > etat, e.g)
>is no longer live in French, which now has plenty of more
>recent words with s+stop initial.
Yes, it's a pretty common phenomenon known as 'prothesis'.

>ObConlang: Brithenig has the living version of the rule,
>but the prefix is y- /i/.
And this is so in Welsh, cf. ysgol (school), ystryd (street).

>This is also the prefix in
>Turkish:  Gr. [Kon]stantinopol- > Ar. [as-]Stamboul
> > T. Istanbul.
I'd always understood the Arabic /stambul/ to be from northern Greek:
[stm='bul] = southern Greek [stim'boli] (written {sthn póli(n)} where {h} =
eta) = in the city.

But the Turkish certainly shows prothesis, as does the Turkish _istasyon_ =
(railway/railroad) station.

Ray.





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A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
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