On vowel prosthesis before sC in Substandard Latin and Koine Greek: a synoptic review

This paper aims at proposing a synoptic account of vowel prosthesis in word-initial sC in Substandard Latin and Koine Greek. A new recensio of the attestations in documentary texts suggests that the phenomenon was spread all around the Roman Empire, both in Substandard Latin and Koine Greek (§ 2). Different syntopic analyses have been subsequently provided in order to investigate both external and internal factors, namely to which level of variation this phenomenon is to be attributed in a diasystematic perspective and the phonotactic and prosodic contexts in which vowel prosthesis emerges (§§ 3, 4). Finally (§ 5), the diachronic path is taken into account focusing on the following topics: i. the relation between polygenesis and monogenesis, continuity and discontinuity; ii. Greek/Latin interference, in the attempt to establish which language is responsible for triggering the phenomenon; iii. phonological drifts in Substandard Latin which determined the creation of a word-initial pattern (viz. the deletion of initial ex-, the simplification of #in+sC into #isC and the aphaeresis of #VsC into #sC).