Latin Phonology

[cloudy]

Hi, I have a question about Latin phonology; specifically about Nominative forms/markers.
In some nominative forms like 'arks', 'dens', and urps' , there's the  -s suffix, but for some, like 'no:men', 'arbor', and 'pugil' , there isn't the marker.

Am I to assume that 'arks' is the underlying representation and the -s is deleted, or am I to assume that -s is inserted? What decides that the nominative marker is in some cases none and in other cases is -s?

Sorry if it is confusing; I am pretty confused at the moment 

[panini]

Same answer as http://www.lingforum.com/forum/viewtopic.php?p=75006#75006.

[cloudy]

Thanks for the reply!

I'm a bit new to Phonology, so I might have a lot of questions.

I've written out the environments where -s occur and where 'null' occurs, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious pattern. Am I missing something about rule derivation?

Thanks again for your help

[freknu]

Have you looked at the etymology of these words? What are the PIE forms/stems and is there a pattern?

[panini]

I've written out the environments where -s occur and where 'null' occurs, but there doesn't seem to be an obvious pattern.

Well, do you at least have a list of segments that go with one vs. the other?

[cloudy]

I'm not too sure what you mean, but, could you possibly explain why

déns, sórs, lí:s, árks ^{and the like} are suffixed with -s, yet árbor and nó:men aren't?

 

[panini]

The first step is to extract all of the words that have [ s ], and all of the words that have Ø. Then you look for some similarity in the words that have [  s], versus Ø. Bear in mind that the similarity need not be evident in the actual pronunciation: recall that the surface form is the result of applying rules to an underlying form, so in making your list, think about what the underlying forms are.


[admin edit: fixing formatting, [ s ] was making it strikethrough text]