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17 votes

Are there exceptions to the Latin stress rules?

Imho the most comprehensive treatment of Latin accent (beautifully defined as "anima vocis" by some Roman grammarians) is Leumann, Hofmann, and Szantyr 1977, Lateinische Grammatik. Band I. Lateinische ...
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17 votes
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Are there exceptions to the Latin stress rules?

Yes, there are exceptions, but fortunately not very many. Allen & Greenough has a short summary at §12.a, which I'll discuss here. The first common exception you'll come across is a word with an ...
  • 46.4k
12 votes

Why do some Latin adverbs have accent on the last syllable?

This seems to be a mystery. I haven't found any good explanation yet; I don't know if this is because the subject has been neglected so far, or if it's because the very occurrence of the phenomenon is ...
  • 24.3k
10 votes

Are there exceptions to the Latin stress rules?

I'll just add one class to what cmw says in his excellent answer, which is shortened fourth-conjugation first-person singular perfects. Dormiī, audiī, veniī, and the like are all stressed on a short ...
  • 16.2k
9 votes

Why do some Latin adverbs have accent on the last syllable?

An important note about my sources: A question has been raised by another user re: sources in my answer. Anyone can easily check the accuracy of my statements and sources. Dr. Stotz is an expert in ...
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8 votes
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How to pronounce "Roterodamus"?

A colleague asked me about this a while ago. I agree with that colleague and with you that to native speakers of Dutch it would be absurd (or at least ridiculous) to stress the antepenult. As for ...
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7 votes
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Does Greek accent ever affect Latin stress?

Greek stress could be used in the medieval period. Per An Introduction to the Study of Medieval Latin Versification, by Dag Norberg, translated by Grant C. Roti and Jacqueline de La Chappelle Skulby: ...
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7 votes
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How do we know where the Roman prose stress was?

W. Sidney Allen in Vox Latina says that various grammarians such as Quintilian stated the rules quite unambiguously (although he also writes that "there is some controversy about the nature of the ...
  • 4,598
7 votes
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Etymology and pronunciation of words ending in “-iasis”

Pronunciation Below you can see the vowel lengths marked by L&S and by OLD. Note that OLD doesn't cover post-Classical vocabulary. (In this table L&S = the online L&S via Perseus; OLD = ...
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6 votes

Why do some Latin adverbs have accent on the last syllable?

It seems that Saint Augustine in your quote is describing the same phenomenon that we can see consistently marked in later Latin. While trying to read Marracci's 'Refutatio Alcorani' (https://books....
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6 votes
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Pronunciation in medical terminology

As far as I can tell, there are no classical precedents for the specific form of the ending -oideus. It ultimately comes from Ancient Greek -οειδής, an ending found mostly on third-declension ...
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5 votes
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Vowel shortening before another vowel: Exceptions

I think of hiatus vowel shortening in Latin as a historical rule. Some linguistic analyses might treat it as a synchronically active morphophonological rule in certain contexts, like the conjugation ...
  • 24.3k
5 votes

When did Old Latin develop initial stress?

-very brief and disorganized notes (not a full answer), maybe someone else will be willing to write a more coherent answer- Weiss 2020: 527 "Primary stress on the initial syllable is inferred on ...
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4 votes
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Gemination after stressed vowel

You're right that such gemination is not correct Classical pronunciation, and I believe the answer to your question whether it occurred in post-Classical Latin/Romance is no. Italian amata does not, ...
  • 29.6k
4 votes

How is stress realized in Latin phonetically?

We don't exactly know. In Greek, we have a pretty good idea of how the accent worked: it involved a change in pitch, which was supposedly close to the interval of a fifth (as the grammarian Dionysius ...
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4 votes
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Were enclitics considered part of a word for stress purposes?

As you mentioned, it is very difficult to say anything clear about stress in Classical Latin, because there is little evidence, either direct or indirect, of the position of the stress. As Joonas ...
  • 24.3k
4 votes

Dating the penult rule

By the third century BCE… …probably. We're not quite sure when. In a question about Old Latin meters, an anonymous user brought up Mercado's convincing argument that the Saturnian was based on accent. ...
  • 57.8k
4 votes

Stress of presbyterum, presbytero

The first thing to check is vowel lengths. L&S indicates that all vowels in presbyter and presbyteri are short apart from the genitive ending -i. In presbyter the second last syllable by is light (...
3 votes

Does Greek accent ever affect Latin stress?

Weiss's Outline of the Historical and Comaprative Grammar of Latin, p. 112, gives some examples of exactly this phenomenon: Philippus (Gk. Φίλιππος) scans in Old Latin verse as if its second syllable ...
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3 votes

Vowel shortening before another vowel: Exceptions

What do historical grammars of Latin usually say on this? Usually such exceptions do not get enough treatment in historical grammars of Latin, e.g. “Bei den klassischen Messungen wie āēr, Aenēās usw. ...
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3 votes
Accepted

How is the word "Eboracum" stressed in Latin?

If the underlying Celtic form was in fact Eburākon, then one would expect it to have been borrowed into Latin with a long ā and hence pronounced with the accent on the paenultima.
  • 16.6k
3 votes

When did the penult stress rule disappear?

I cannot agree with your statement that “vowel length seems to have been lost very early” in Latin. Latin long and short vowels develop differently in the daughter languages. For example Latin short e ...
  • 16.6k
3 votes
Accepted

When did the penult stress rule disappear?

I think you're mistaken when you say "certain sound changes in the Romance languages, like posttonic vowel syncope ..., still rely on the penult stress rules". There are two separate processes ...
  • 4,598
3 votes
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How to place a second stress on a long word

There are various practical systems of pronunciation — in the UK we find the versions of Oxford, of Westminster School, the Roman Catholic Church and so on. As far as I know, none is really ...
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3 votes

Gemination after stressed vowel

I don't know exactly why you have heard pronunciations of Italian amata with a long /tː/, but I would guess this is just a case of different speakers using different phonetic durations for ...
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3 votes
Accepted

Moving the stress in sung Latin

I've never seen Latin set like this, by French composers or others: Couperin, Charpentier, Lully, Fauré, Duruflé, Poulenc—they all set their Latin so that it follows the stress pattern we all know and ...
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3 votes

Where to place accent after applying diaeresis?

I'm doubtful that the diaeresis would be used in this way: you can't generally break diphthongs into two short vowels metri causa. There are occasional examples in Homer of disyllabic scansion of what ...
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2 votes

Stressed syllables in certain prefixed verb forms

The Arch poet (c1130-1167) wrote a mock confession to his patron, Archbishop, and Arch-Chancellor to Barbarossa. Because his verse here written in stressed trochaics, Odds are stressed and Evens ...
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2 votes

Did Classical Latin stress impact any sound changes?

I don't know of any obvious or systematic effects that Classical Latin stress had on sound changes. The non-obvious effects that I've seen proposed for Classical Latin stress are "brevis brevians" or ...
  • 24.3k
2 votes

Did Classical Latin stress impact any sound changes?

I'm not completely sure that I've understood your question, but I'll make a stab at it anyway. How does Classical Latin accent affect the modern Romance languages? Well. here's a start. Words of ...
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