Timeline for How did the Latin past participle suffix -atus develop into modern French -é?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
5 events
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| Jul 26, 2017 at 21:24 | comment | added | Eleshar | It is because there is no metathesis - do not get confused by the historicising orthography of French where you have -aire instead of -ère simply because some scholars of old liked to make the written form more reminiscent of the Latin original (which in some cases they even determined incorrectly). There is no evidence of any -aCem > -aeC metathesis and there is quite overwhelming evidence against it (basically all the passive participles ending in -atum still following the same course of evolution as you aptly noted yourself). | |
| Jul 24, 2017 at 21:04 | comment | added | Lucian | Amateur here: It would seem to me that in all three examples, a metathesis takes place, and then the diphthongs ai and ae gradually become an umlaut-ed a, which then naturally morphs into an e. Same for aestatem. This does not the seem to be the case with status, -um, however. If anything, we should have had étau(t). | |
| Jun 26, 2017 at 22:48 | history | edited | Eleshar | CC BY-SA 3.0 |
added 27 characters in body
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| Jun 26, 2017 at 22:47 | comment | added | Eleshar | You are most likely correct - before the loss of the final vowel, the original Latin /t/ got voiced to /d/ but also it most likely continued the lenition to a fricative as in Spanish or elsewhere in French (c.f. sudor > sueur). With the final devoicing, this would produce /θ/, which would be even more likely to be further supressed. | |
| Jun 26, 2017 at 22:37 | history | answered | Eleshar | CC BY-SA 3.0 |