Sabellian language spoken in the same area): Proto-Italic *s > Latin /r/ between vowels: *gesō "I do, act" > Lat. gerō (but perfect gessi < *ges-s- and participle gestus < *ges-to-, etc., with unchanged *s in all other environments, even in the same paradigm). This sound law is quite complete and regular, and in its immediate wake there were no examples of /s/ between vowels except for a few words with a special condition (miser "wretched", caesariēs "bushy hair", diser(c)tus "eloquent": that is, rhotacism did not take place when an /r/ followed the *s). However, a new crop of /s/ between vowels soon arose from three sources. (1) a shortening of /ss/ after a diphthong or long vowel: causa "lawsuit" < *kawssā, cāsa "house' < *kāssā, fūsus "poured, melted" < *χewssos. (2) univerbation: nisi (nisī) "unless" < the phrase *ne sei, quasi (quasī) "as if" < the phrase *kʷam sei. (3) borrowings, such as rosa "rose" /rosa/, from a Sabellian source (the word is clearly somehow from Proto-Italic *ruθ- "red" but equally clearly not native Latin), and many words taken from or through Greek (philosophia, basis, casia, Mesopotamia, etc., etc.). Nasal assimilation and "gn" in Latin A particular example of a conditioned merger in Latin is the rule whereby syllable-final stops, when followed by a nasal consonant, assimilated with it in nasality, while preserving their original point of articulation: *supimos > *supmos > summus "highest" *sabnyom > Samnium "Samnium" (a region in the southern Apennines) *swepnos > somnus "sleep" *atnos > annus "year" In some cases, the underlying (pre-assimilation) root can be retrieved from related lexical items in the language: e.g. superior "higher"; Sabīni "Samnites"; sopor "(deep) sleep". For some words, only comparative evidence can help retrieve the original consonant: for example, the etymology of annus “year” (as *atnos) is revealed by comparison with Gothic aþna “year”. According to this rule of nasal assimilation, the sequences *-g-n and *-k-n would become , with a velar nasal : *dek-no- > dignus [diŋnus] "worthy" *leg-no- (*leǵ- "gather") > lignum [liŋnum] "firewood" *teg-no- (*(s)teg- "build") > tignum [tiŋnum] "timber" *agʷnos > *ag-nos > agnus [aŋnus] "lamb" The sound [ŋ] was not a phoneme of Latin, but an allophone of /g/ before /n/. The sequence was regularly rendered in the orthography as |gn|. Some epigraphic inscriptions also feature non-standard spellings, e.g. SINNU for signum "sign, insigne", INGNEM for ignem "fire". These are witness to