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First, though it is indicated by an apostrophe in modern texts, elision also occurs in ancient Greek poetry. The rules were different from Latin, though. I quote Smyth for them: Elision is the expulsion of a short vowel at the end of a word before a word beginning with a vowel. An apostrophe ( ’ ) marks the place where the vowel is elided. ἀλλ’(ά) ...

Elision of a vowel (or vowel + m) occurs when it's at the end of the word, and the next word starts with either a vowel or h + vowel. At the discretion of the poet, the last vowel of a word can be kept even if the next starts with one; in this case, it's considered to be in hiatus. However, this is very, very rare. However, if the second word is a form of ...

I need to contradict the notion of "elision requirement" postulated in one of the comments on the previous question. In written Latin there is no elision. You write quite simply "contra audacem", "mea anima" etc. In poetry the final vowel of the first word will usually be elided (or perhaps merely shortened), or not, as required, but in any event this does ...

This is discussed in great detail in Allen’s classic Vox Latina ch. 4. His conclusion is (briefly) that a final short vowel followed by another vowel in the next word was elided (elisio), but a long vowel in the same position was reduced to a semivowel (synizesis).

The literature that I've viewed so far suggests that in Plautine Latin, forms like domust for domus est could be found, but not forms like dom'et for domus et. Terence and the Verb 'To Be' in Latin, by Giuseppe Pezzini (2015), describes -us est → -ust as (in at least some time periods) a special contraction belonging to est, rather than an example of regular ...

Elision in Latin is a complicated topic and I only know basic information about it. I think it is normal in any period to elide final -ae, as in meae, before a following vowel. András Cser ("Aspects of the Phonology and Morphology of Classical Latin", 2016) puts it like this: Word-final [aj] is elided in poetry just like any vowel (including the nasal ...

It's a hiatus because it's located at the principle caesura: et vera | inces|su patu|it dea. || Ille ubi | matrem In fact, Lodge specifically references this line in the section on hiatus, as I'm sure do a few others. Note that hiatus isn't impossible anywhere, but it's common specifically here. The grammars will typically say "most" or "usually", and I'...

(Partial answer). It seems to have been a long process, but apparently there was was a trend towards using less elision that started before the end of Classical Latin. The article Elision and Hiatus in Latin Prose, by Andrew M. Riggsby (Classical Antiquity, Vol. 10, No. 2 (Oct., 1991), pp. 328-343) refers to E. A. Sturtevant and R. G. Kent's "'Elision and ...

The shorter ac is not the same thing as atque with elision. The former is a short (light) syllable, the latter a long (heavy) one. Latin seems to want to preserve syllable length in sound changes, so its importance is not limited to poetry. So yes, the -e will be elided, but there still is a difference between atqu' and ac. The original form is atque (at+...

I haven't read any linguist's comments on this matter, so my post is just a collection of guesses. Perhaps for grammatical reasons Elision frequently deletes vowels that are part of grammatical endings, or sometimes part of highly grammaticalized monosyllabic words such as est (with "prodelision"). Grammatical endings often have a certain amount of ...