Prothesis (linguistics)

In linguistics, prothesis (ˈprɒθɪsɪs; from post-classical Latin based on πρόθεσις próthesis 'placing before'), or less commonly prosthesis (from Ancient Greek πρόσθεσις prósthesis 'addition') is the addition of a sound or syllable at the beginning of a word without changing the word's meaning or the rest of its structure. A vowel or consonant added by prothesis is called prothetic or less commonly prosthetic. Prothesis is different from the adding of a prefix, which changes the meaning of a word. Prothesis is a metaplasm, a change in spelling or pronunciation. The opposite process, the loss of a sound from the beginning of a word, is called apheresis or aphesis. Prothesis may occur during word formation from borrowing from foreign languages or the derivation from protolanguages. A well-known example is that /s/ + stop clusters (known as s impurum), in Latin, gained a preceding /e/ in early Romance languages (Old Spanish, Old French). Thus, Latin status changed to Spanish estado and French état, été (in which the s was later lost) "state"/"been", and Latin speciālis changed to Spanish and Old French especial (Modern French spécial and Italian speciale). Some Turkic languages avoid certain combinations of consonants at the beginning of a word. In Turkish, for instance, Smyrna is called İzmir, and the word station, borrowed from French, becomes Turkish istasyon. Similarly, in Bashkir, a prosthetic vowel is added to Russian loanwords if a consonant or a consonant cluster appears at the beginning: арыш "rye" from Russian рожь, өҫтәл "table" from Russian стол, эскәмйә "bench" from Russian скамья, etc. However, Bashkir presents cases of novel prothesis in terms that are inherited from Old Turkic: ыласын "falcon" from Old Turkic lačïn, ысыҡ "dew" from Old Turkic čïq. In Nenets, Enets and Nganasan, prothesis of a velar nasal [ŋ] before vowels has occurred historically: the Nenets words /ŋuːʔ/ "road", /ŋin/ "bow" are cognate with Hungarian út, íj with the same meaning.