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Hi!
Jan van Steenbergen writes:
> --- Keith Gaughan skrzypszy:
>
> > Let's suppose for a minute that 'Ille' served as the basis for the
> > Elbic definite article. In Latin, it was:
> >
> > in the singular
> >
> > nom. ille illa illud
> > gen. illius illius illius
> > dat. illi illi illi
> > acc. illum illam illud
> > abl. illo illa illo
>
> Just remember that in Vulgar Latin, the genitive ending -ius and the
> dative ending -i were substituted by regular endings. Therefore:
>
> nom. ille illa illum
> gen. illi illae illi
> dat. illo illae illo
> acc. illum illam illum
> abl. illo illa illo
>
> At least, if I'm not véry mistaken!
I thought these were not *Vulgar* forms, because 'totus', 'solus',
'alius', etc. even took pronomial forms *from* is/ille/iste. Further,
Allen and Greenough state that 'eae' is an *old* form for f.dat.sg. of
'is, ea, id', so I'd think that the pronomial forms were actually
becoming more wide-spread. For 'illae' vs. 'illius', they just state
that the 'illae' forms are 'sometimes' used.
I thought that in Vulgar times, 'ille' indeed went towards adjectives,
but still with different forms, among them 'illus' m.sg.nom., later
'illu' ('lo' in some Modern Romance langs) instead of 'ille' and
'illaei' and 'illui' in the dative to yield 'lui' and 'lei' in
Italian, and with 'illaeius', 'illuius' in the genitive. (And
abl. and acc. had probably merged due to the drop of final -m.) So
I'd reconstruct Proto-Romance forms as:
*illu(s) *illa (*illud)
*illuius *illaeius (*illuius)
*illui *illaei (*illui)
*illu *illa (*illud)
I am not sure at all, though. Is there some expert of Vulgar Latin
around who knows this?
In Germanic, a (possibly parallel) development has introduced
pronomial endings in the adjective endings. And for this reason, I
have recently reworked my Þrjótrunn to take some pronomial forms into
adjective declension. Therefore, the language is now written with
-nn. :-) (North Romance did not have the 'illuius' forms, however,
but I'm still investigating whether that is realistic.)
**Henrik
PS: Cross-posting to romconlang, maybe someone knows more, there.
I'm really curious!