Osthoff’s Law in Latin

Abstract

The sound change known as Osthoff’s Law, shortening a long vowel before a resonant-consonant cluster, was first explicitly described to have applied in the prehistory of Greek by Osthoff (1884). Since then, the existence of a similar sound change in Latin has been controversial in the literature, with claimed examples such as *vēntus > ventus ‘wind’. At one end, Simkin (2004) argues that Osthoff’s Law never took place in Latin; at the other, Weiss (2009) claims at least three independent rounds of Osthoff’s Law in the history of the Italic branch. I summarize the synchronic facts about pre-cluster vowel length in classical Latin using a comprehensive survey of the Latin lexicon, with a historical explanation for the vowel length in every form containing a cluster. I argue that Osthoff’s Law happened in Latin (contra Simkin), but only once (contra Weiss), around the 2nd century BCE.