/t͡ʃ/) after n due to Parthian influence, instead of the usual weakening to z. This pronunciation is reflected in Book Pahlavi, but not in Manichaean texts: Proto-Iranian *panča > panǰ (spelt pnc in Book Pahlavi) or panz (spelt pnz in Manichaean) Judging from the spelling, the consonant /θ/ may have been pronounced before /r/ in certain borrowings from Parthian in Arsacid times (unlike native words, which had /h/ for earlier *θ in general and /s/ for the cluster *θr in particular), but it had been replaced by /h/ by the Sassanid period: Arsacid miθr > Sassanid mihr 'Mithra, contract' (Pahlavi mtr', Manichaean myhr). The phoneme /ɣ/ (as opposed to the late allophone of /g/) is rare and occurs almost only in learned borrowings from Avestan and Parthian, e.g. moγ (Pahlavi mgw or mwg 'Magian'), maγ (Pahlavi mγ) 'hole, pit'. The sound /ʒ/ may also have functioned as a marginal phoneme in borrowings as well. The phoneme /l/ was still relatively rare as well, especially so in Manichaean texts, mostly resulting from Proto-Iranian *rd, *rz and, more rarely, *r. It also occurred in the combination /hl/, which was a reflex of Old Persian /rθ/ and /rs/ (cf. the words 'Pahlavi' and 'Parthian'). The sound /xw/ may be viewed as a phoneme or merely as a combination of /x/ and /w/. Usually /x/, /xw/ and /ɣ/ are considered to have been velar; a less common view is that /x/ and /ɣ/ were uvular instead. Finally, it may be pointed out that most scholars consider the phoneme /w/ as being still a labial approximant, but a few regard it as a voiced labial fricative /v/. The initial clusters of /s/ and a stop (/sp-/, /st-/, /sk-/) had acquired a prosthetic vowel /i/ by the time of the Manichaean Middle Persian texts: istāyišn (ՙst՚yšn) 'praise' vs Pahlavi stāyišn (ՙst՚dšn') 'praise'. Prosody Stress was on the last syllable. That was due to the fact that any Old Persian post-stress syllables had been apocopated: Old Persian pati 'at' > Middle Persian pad Old Persian martiya- 'man' > Middle Persian mard Old Persian martiyā́nām 'man' (genitive-dative plural) > Middle Persian mardān It has been suggested that words such as anīy 'other' (Pahlavi spelling AHRN, AHRNyd, Manichaean ՚ny) and mahīy 'bigger' (Manichaean mhy) may have been exceptionally stressed on the first syllable, since the last one was apocopated already in the course of the Middle Persian period: the