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In linguistics, prothesis (from post-classical Latin[1] based on Ancient Greek próthesis 'placing before'),[2][3] or less commonly[4] prosthesis (from Ancient Greek prósthesis 'addition')[5][6] is the addition of a sound or syllable at the beginning of a word without changing the word's meaning or the rest of its structure. A vowel or consonant added by prosthesis is called prothetic or prosthetic.
Prothesis is different from the adding of a prefix, which changes the meaning of a word.
Prothesis is a metaplasm, a change in spelling or pronunciation. The opposite process, the loss of a sound from the beginning of a word, is called apheresis or aphesis.
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Prothesis may be a way of word formation during borrowing from foreign languages or during derivation from proto-languages.
A well-known example: /s/ + stop clusters (known as s impurum) in Latin gained a preceding /e/ in early Romance languages (Old Spanish, Old French).[7] Hence, Latin status changed to Spanish estado and French état/été (in which the s was lost) "state"/"been", and Latin speciālis changed to Spanish and Old French especial (Modern French and English special).
Some Turkic languages avoid certain combinations of consonants at the beginning of a word. In Turkish, for instance, Smyrna is called İzmir, and the word station, being borrowed from French becomes Turkish istasyon.
In some varieties of Nenets, the initial syllable cannot start with a vowel, therefore when borrowing the initial nasal consonant prothesis ng [ŋ] is used.
Hindi borrowing from English words with initial i; sp-, sk- or sm- clusters: school → iskuul, special → ispesal.
During the evolution from the Proto-Slavic language words in various Slavic languages employed pro(s)thetic consonants. Compare: Russian okno ("window") vs. Ukrainian vikno or Belarusian vakno. Another example: Polish wątroba ("liver sausage") from PS ǫtroba (cf. Russian utroba).[8]
Examples of a pro(s)thetic vowel performing external sandhi are known, e.g., in Italian language. Compare: la scuola ("the school") vs. in iscuola ("at school"). It is therefore conjectured that the origins of the Romance prothesis are phonetical ones, rather than grammatical ones, and initially prothesis was for breaking consonant clusters with the preceding word ending in consonant. This hypothesis is corroborated by the absence of prothesis in Romance dialects that had lost their terminal consonants [9]
Phonetic rules of the native language may influence pronunciation of a second language, including various metaplasms. For example, prothesis is reported for Crimean Tatars speaking Russian language.[10]
James L. Barker writes:[11]"If an Arab, an East Indian, a Frenchman, Spaniard, or Italian is given the following sentence to read: I want to speak Spanish, he reads it in the following manner: I want to speak (i)/(e)Spanish. In this case there is no 'parasitic' i or e before sp of speak, but there is before sp in Spanish".