Prosthesis (linguistics)

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Prosthesis or prothesis in linguistics (from Greek pro "before" + tithenai "to put") is the prepending of phonemes at the beginning of a word without changing its morphological structure. In terms of orthography, it is a form of metaplasm. The prepending of a vowel is called vocalic prothesis, with the vowel known as prothetic vowel. Similarly, the term prothetic consonant is in use.

Prothesis should not be confused with the morphological process of the prepending of a prefix, as in "rhythmic" → "arhythmic".

The opposite phenomenon, of the disappearance of the initial sounds, is called aphesis.

Prothesis in word formation

Prothesis may be a way of word formation during borrowing from foreign languages or during derivation from protolanguages.

As 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). Hence, the Spanish word for state is estado, deriving from Latin status.

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 dialects of Nenets language, 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 Protoslavic language words in various Slavic languages employed prothetic consonants. Compare: Russian okno ("window") vs. Ukrainian vikno or Belarusian vakno. Another example: Polish wątroba from PS ǫtroba (cf. Russian utroba)

Prosthesis as sandhi

Examples of a prosthetic 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 prosthesis are phonetical ones, rather than grammatical ones, and initially prosthesis was for breaking consonant clusters with the preceding word ending in consonant. This hypothesis is corroborated by the absence of prosthesis in Romance dialects that had lost their terminal consonants

Prothesis in second language

Phonetical 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.

James L. Barker writes:: "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".

Prosthesis (linguistics)

Prothesis in word formation

Prosthesis as sandhi

Prothesis in second language

See also

References

Further reading