15. _Effect on Verb Inflexion._--These processes had far-reaching effects on Latin inflexion. The chief of these was the creation of the type of conjugation known as the _capio_-class. All these verbs were originally inflected like _audio_, but the accident of their short root-syllable, (in such early forms as *_fúgis_, *_fugiturus_, *_fugisetis_, &c., becoming later _fúgis_, _fugiturus_, _fugeretis_) brought great parts of their paradigm under this law, and the rest followed suit; but true forms like _fugire_, _cupire_, _moriri_, never altogether died out of the spoken language. St Augustine, for instance, confessed in 387 A.D. (_Epist._ iii. 5, quoted by Exon, _Hermathena_ (1901), xi. 383,) that he does not know whether _cupi_ or _cupiri_ is the pass. inf. of _cupio_. Hence we have Ital. _fuggire_, _morire_, Fr. _fuir_, _mourir_. (See further on this conjugation, C. Exon, _l.c._, and F. Skutsch, _Archiv für lat. Lexicographie_, xii. 210, two papers which were written independently.)
16. The question has been raised how far the true phonetic shortening appears in Plautus, produced not by word-accent but by metrical ictus--e.g. whether the reading is to be trusted in such lines as _Amph._ 761, which gives us _dedisse_ as the first foot (tribrach) of a trochaic line "because the metrical ictus fell on the syllable _ded_-"--but this remarkable theory cannot be discussed here. See the articles cited and also F. Skutsch, _Forschungen zu Latein. Grammatik und Metrik_, i. (1892); C. Exon, _Hermathena_ (1903) xii. p. 492, W. M. Lindsay, _Captivi_ (1900), appendix.
In the history of the vowels and diphthongs in Latin we must distinguish the changes which came about independently of accent and those produced by the preponderance of accent in another syllable.
17. _Vowel Changes independent of Accent._--In the former category the following are those of chief importance:--
(i.) _i_ became _e_ (a) when final, as in _ant-e_ beside Gr. [Greek: anti], _triste_ besides _tristi-s_, contrasted with e.g., the Greek neuter [Greek: idri] (the final -_e_ of the infinitive--_regere_, &c.--is the -_i_ of the locative, just as in the so-called ablatives _genere_, &c.); (b) before -_r_- which has arisen from -_s_-, as in _cineris_ beside _cinis_, _cinisculus_; _sero_ beside Gr. [Greek: i(s)êmi] (Ind.-Eur. *_si-semi_, a reduplicated non-thematic present).