Schlatter-—The Development of the Vowel. 1077 
of the initial unaccented vowel does not seem to have materially 
changed, phonetically, in Florence, since the beginning of lit¬ 
erary times,—except, of course, the driving out of most of the 
Latin and dialectal forms, save in literary or foreign words. 
FTo living language probably changed less, phonetically, than- 5 
Italian during the past six or seven centuries. 
7. Perhaps it may be objected that I have not taken into ac¬ 
count the difference between a completely unaccented vowel 
and that which is under the secondary stress. I had thought 
of the distinction, but the vowels under these two different 
conditions seemed to develop in the same way, with only a 
few possible exceptions. The distinction in development be¬ 
tween the two forms Florenti9e> Fiorenze> Firenze and 
florentinu—■> fiorentine is very clearly caused by the second¬ 
ary accent. It is not so clear in the double forms (in the old 
language), desiderare and disiderare. One might assume 
theoretically that the forms in I are due to forms accented on 
the second syllable'—disidero, disiderano, etc.—and that the- 
forms in E are due to forms in which the first syllable had a< 
secondary accent—desiderare, desiderio, etc. Yet this theory 
is quite impossible of proof and one may just as well sustain* 
that the forms in E are all due to a process of dissimilation.. 
And what is to be said of such forms as del, nel, etc., beside 
il ? And of mi, beside me ne etc. ? The vowel in all was orig¬ 
inally accented: del <dello <d (e)—ellu-—, me ne <m’ene 
<m’enne <m ? ende, te lo <t(e)—ellu, and so forth. The ex¬ 
planation of secondary accent will not satisfy the form il, nor 
mi, ti, etc., either, in many cases of prosthetic use. Perhaps 
the explanation is that the development of E to I in Florence 
had ceased its operation before these forms with E had quite 
lost their accent or become monosyllabic; in that case, the form 
il apparently became monosyllabic and unaccented before the 
other forms did either. The theory of the cessation of the de- 
(Giornale Storico, X, p. 182), after certain examples of occasional E 
beside the regular I, he says: “Esempi simili ci indurrebbero forse a 
credere che la tendenza del fiorentino ad i atono, per lo meno interno , 
non riuscisse ad assoggettarsi stabilmente tutto il materiale linguis- 
tico se non assai piu tardi di quello che si crederebbe.” Cf. also §7, 
note 1. 
