Talk:insapiens
Phonology and stress[edit]
I am surprised the Classical Latin phonological representation of this word is /inˈsa.pi.ens/, as I would have expected /ˈin.sa.pjens/ with only three syllables and the stress on the first, now antepenultimate, syllable (due to the short vowel /a/ in the open syllable that constitutes the penultimate).
The Latin letter ‹i› is, of course, phonologically ambiguous; it may represent either a syllabic /i(ː)/ (i.e., a vocoid that constitutes the nucleus of a syllable), or an unsyllabic /j/ (a non-nuclear vocoid, or “semi-vowel”), the latter occurring only in front of a (syllabic, or “full”) vowel, as in ‹Iuppiter› /ˈjup-/ “Jupiter”. What sources is this interpretation of pre-vocalic ‹i› as a syllabic /i/ based on? Don't the Romance daughter languages of Latin provide ample evidence in favour of unsyllabic /j/? —LiliCharlie (talk) 02:47, 31 July 2019 (UTC)