r and s

[John Hewson]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
 
In the flurry of comments on rhotacism, Sheila Watts original question
seems to have been lost: is the s/r alternation in Latin attributable to
something like Verner's Law? Paul Hopper did comment that the change in
Latin affected all instances of intervocalic /s/, and that leaves us with
Sheila's question as to why haereo/haesi and English adhere/adhesive?
 
The answer is that intervocalic /s/ in Classical Latin comes from original
clusters, mostly /ss/, /ts/, /st/, and so forth. Latin haesi is obviously
a sigmatic perfect (Latin merged the perfect and the sigmatic aorist,
leaving remnants of both morphologies), similar to scribo/scripsi,
nubo/nupsi, rideo/risi <ritsi <ridsi, etc. So *haes + si would have given
original *haessi, which would not have undergone rhotacism, and would
later be reduced to haesi. Hence the present stem has -r-, and the perfect
stem has -s-, but this alternation has nothing to do with Verner's Law.
 
 
 
John Hewson, FRSC                               tel: (709)737-8131
Henrietta Harvey Professor                      fax:(709)737-4000
Memorial University of Newfoundland
St. John's NF, CANADA A1B 3X9