[YG Conlang Archives] > [romconlang group] > messages [Date Index] [Thread Index] >
On 06/02/2007 14:53, Daniel Prohaska wrote:
From: Carl Edlund AndersonMy sense is that the masc.nom.sing. -o in Italian and Spanish is (as already noted) mostly the result of loss of final -m in the masc/neut acc. sing., though perhaps what we're really looking at is an analogical levelling of the masc.nom.sing. from a 2-case system (nom: -os; obl: -o) as -s increasingly becomes analyzedas a plural marker."Yes, that's what I believe, too. We still have nom.sg. <-s> in Castilianpersonal names, like <Carlos>.
One of my favorite personal names .... ;) though I suppose Italian went the other way to use nom.sg. <Carlo>.
I'm sure I've sometimes seen articles about the scattered generalization of nominative over accusative forms in Spanish and Italian, though I haven't investigated enough to say anything very sensible about it. I suppose this is also why one has Spanish <dios> rather than *dio?
I have read that the Italian masc. pl. -i is not necessarily a survival of the 2nd declension nom.pl., but could rather be the result of loss of final -s from the acc.pl., perhaps something like -os > -oh > -oi > -i? Perhaps there was loss of -s in the acc.pl. and corresponding influence from the regular nom.pl. -i? I'm not really up on the Italo-Romance situation though!Unlikely. The two case Romance system survived well into the various regions and the East generalised the nominative forms, whereas the West generalised the accusative forms. Examples of the intermediary two-case system can beseen in Old French and Old Provencal.
Indeed, that's my general understanding -- though I nevertheless have the sense that I've read arguments for Italian pl. -i from earlier -s .... I have a book on Italian that I've never yet read very carefully, and I'll have to check to see what it says ....
Cheers, Carl -- Carl Edlund Anderson mailto:cea@hidden.email http://www.carlaz.com/