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Henrik Theiling skrev:
Hi! Benct Philip Jonsson writes:... Anyway thanks all of you who answered, I needed to know because I decided that the name of |ç| in R3 is 'hooked c' _c enciniade < oencineade /2ntsinead@/ < UNCÎNÂTA_. ...And I assume the beginning of the word derived thus: unki.. > onki (Vulgar Latin vowel mergers) > onci (palatalisation, step 1) > ontsi (palatalisation, step 2) > 2ntsi (i-umlaut) > entsi (derouning) ?
Yes that's exactly it. Even later there is also deaffrication of /ts/ so that it merges with /s/. I've decided that of the Renaissance grammarians Grïeur does not mention deaffrication while Pirrí explicitly criticizes it, i.e. Pirrí lived while the change was underway, while Grïeur either belonged to a later generation, or one where the change had begun earlier. The problem I'm having with deaffrication is that I don't want it to affect /tS/, but that's perhaps not all that far out, since in Spanish all other affricates were both deaffricated and underwent various mergers and shifts in POA, while /tS/ remained itself. Notably Spanish /dZ/ deaffricized and merged with /S/, then retracted to /X/. Maybe the different distribution of /tS/ compared to dental affricates and /dZ/ played a role -- if so the same applies to R3. One thing that militates against preserved /tS/ in R3 is that the functional load of the /tS/~/S/ distinction would be even lower than the load of /ts/~/s/.
Nice. :-)
Thanks. Not too different to what actually happened in Old English though.
The second _i_ is not a typo: Romance stressed *a in open syllables undergoes breaking in R3. If an Î follows in the next syllable the outcome is _ie_ identical to short E in open syllables, and if an Û follows in the next syllable the result is _ua < oa < *Q:_.Interesting system. It is quite obvious that you like North Germanic vowels. :-)
Yes, but breaking in North Germanic, Old English and this kind of breaking are essentially three different things. NGmc. breaking is a kind of umlaut, while OE breaking is the POA of the latter part of a vowel becoming more back because a velar or uvular consonant follows, and the kind of breaking *a: undergoes in R3 is a rather ordinary diphthongization of a long vowel. It is a well-known fact that diphthongization in low vowels tend to result in raising diphthongs (as with *E: > iE, *O: > uO > uE in Romance versus *e: > ei > oi, o: > ou > u: in Old French. The so-called /ae/-tensing in North American English where /&/ became [&:] in some contexts and this [&:] then diphthongizes along the path &: > &@ > e@ > I@, is a contemporary ongoing example of this kind of diphthongization of low vowels. The main difference in R3 a-breaking is that the conditions for the initial lengthening is different -- more extensive since in R3 *a lengthened in all stressed open syllables, while in American English it is confined to certain following consonants. See <http://tinyurl.com/hw4ew> a PDF on Italian/Romance diphthongization. While I'm sold on its conclusions it presents the data quite well. See also <http://tinyurl.com/k33sd> Wikipedia on /ae/-tensing. Now the received wisdom wrt diphthongization in Old French is as Peter Rickard says in "A history of the French language". # The vowels [i] and [u] did not diphthongise, but the other # five behaved as follows: # # [E] > [EE] > [iE] as in _pédem_ > O.F. _pié(t)_ (t = [T]) # # [e] > [ee] > [ei] as in _fédem_ (< Cl. _fidem_) > O.F. _fei(t) > foi_ # # [O] > [OO] > [uO] as in _bóvem_ > O.F. _buof > buef_ # # [o] > [oo] > [ou] as in _dolórem_ > O.F. _dolour_ # # [a] > [aa] > [aE]? as in (_máre_ > O.F. _mer_) # # The problem of [a] > [E], exemplified by _máre > mer_, is a # difficult one. It is generally supposed that there was an # early diphthong [aE], soon reduced. At all events, the # reduced form of this diphthong is certainly not written as a # digraph (i.e. with two letters) in O.F., but simply as _e_, # though it seems that the sound was for a long time distinct # from _e_ deriving from other sources: thus, for instance, _la # mer_ (< _máre_) does not rhyme or assonate at first with # _l'enfer_ (< _inférnum_). Now clearly something's wrong with this, especially as the Wikipedia article on Old French says that # /ae/ > /ɛ/ (but > /jɛ/ after a palatal, # and > /aj/ before nasals when not after a palatal). The only explanation that unifies these data is that VL /a:/ > /&:/ in pre-French, which then either shortened to /&/ or diphthongized to /iE/ or /ai/ in different environments. For R3 I have assumed VL stressed /a/ in open syllables became /a: > &: > &@ > e@ > ea > ia/, with the e@ > ea stage represented in Old R3, and eventually /ia/ in early New R3. But R3 wouldn't be R3 without umlaut so it seemed likely that VL 'a > Q: / _ C u (where C may be lacking) with later a parallel diphthongization of this Q: > Q@ > o@ > oa > ua
For some future lang, I considered letting both /e/ and /o/ break:
e > ja / _ (a,u)
o > ju / _ (a,i)
If you want a North-Germanic-like breaking wouldn't it rather be: e > ja / _ a e > jO / _ u o > wa / _ a o > wO / _ u NB that the likely paths of change were fErTuz > fE@rTuz > fEQrTuz > > fjQrDr fErTQ:z > fErTA:z > fE@rTA:z > fEArTA:z > > fjarDar so I can't immediately see how or why an /o/ would end up as /j/ unless you have a general /w/ > /j/ change (which BTW isn't as unlikely as it may seem! :-)
This could make some interesting shifts together with i- and u-umlaut and syncope.
Sure. Note that the E@ > EQ essentially *is* umlaut, posterior to the actual breaking.
Anyway, I like breaking /a/.
So do I. I wanted /ja/ and /wa/ in R3 somehow.
**Henrik
--
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se
"Maybe" is a strange word. When mum or dad says it
it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it
means "no"!
(Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)