Staročeské protetické v
Old Czech Prothetic v

Summary/Abstract: The Old Czech prothetic v- before o-, appearing in the 14th century, has not been connected to the loss of the soft-hard consonantal correlation in the historical grammars of Czech. The author attempts to link the v-prothesis in Old Czech to labiovelarization of the preceding hard consonants, typically bilabials, and discusses the conditions and reasons enabling its stabilization which might have been manifestation of the tendency to push the phoneme /v/ out of the system.

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