On the Relationship between Gemination and Palatalization in Early Romance Loanwords in Common Slavic

Abstract

This paper discusses how geminates in Early Romance loanwords were treated in Common Slavic. The proposal is that there was a tendency for Romance geminates to be replaced by palatalized consonants in Slavic, possibly via an early palatalized geminate stage in Slavic itself. This proposal receives support from the close relation between gemination and palatalization found in other Indo-European languages and presents a more systematic account of the phenomenon than other available explanations.