O- as an facultative allomorph of the verbal prefix od-

Abstract

In a considerable number of verbs the verbal prefix od- appears as o-. The phenomenon is recorded in a wide area of all four štokavian languages, but mainly in southern Dalmatia, Crna Gora and eastern Hercegovina. The loss of /-d-/ most often occurs before fricatives. The author gives a corpus of verbs that undergo this loss and suggests a possible phonetic explanation for this phenomenon based on facultative anticipatory assimilation.

Keywords

• verb formation
• prefix od-
• facultative anticipatory assimilation