📚 Save Big on Books! Enjoy 10% off when you spend £100 and 20% off when you spend £200 (or the equivalent in supported currencies)—discount automatically applied when you add books to your cart before checkout! 🛒

Copyright

Robert Samuel David Crellin; Lucia Tamponi

Published On

2020-06-01

Page Range

pp. 1-54

Print Length

53 pages

Vowel Quantity and Quality in Neo-Punic and Latin Inscriptions from Africa and Sardinia

The chapter by Robert Crellin and Lucia Tamponi elucidates the vowel quality and quantity of Neo-Punic and Latin from North Africa and Sardinia. An important innovation presented in the article is the investigation not only of the representation of vowels in Neo-Punic by means of matres lectionis, but also of zero-representation and its relation to representation by matres lectionis. This sheds light on the degree of sensitivity of writers of Neo-Punic inscriptions to vowel length in Latin. The examination of the representation of vowel length and vowel quality further reveals that in both North Africa and Sardinia the distinction between /i, eː/ and /u, oː/ was retained despite the merger of these phonemes in Common Romance. The authors convincingly suggest that this is due to ties between North Africa and Sardinia. The article thus adds to our understanding of the linguistic development of both Romance and Punic in North Africa and Sardinia and to the relations between those two communities.