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## Date of the Gallo-Romance/Northern Romance POD.
(I'm posting this also to <blog.melroch.se>)
IMHO the 2nd century is too late a date for the GRmc.-NRmc.
divergence. It is important to remember that two dialect
areas which remain in contact with each other don't break,
but rather slide apart. Moreover I think we want Germanic
phonology to have an influence from the outset, since
that's rather the idea with a substrate: when a language
spreads into an area where it wasn't spoken before the
first generation will speak it with a broken accent, part
of which will transfer to the native accent of the second
and third generations. Also there is no need to assume that
all Gallican innovations during the first century spread
into Germania.
So we have some 'Germanican'[^Germanican] innovations right
from the outset and some Gallican innovations which do reach
Germania as well as some which don't. To a degree this means
that we can pick and choose, but in so doing we should keep
an eye on what was universal VL, what was only Western
Romance and what was only Gallican.
[^Germanican]: 'pertaining to the Romans of Germania'. This
is unattested, but analogous to *Africanus* 'pertaining to
the Romans of Africa', *Gallicanus* 'pertaining to the
Romans of Gaul'.
Also the Germanic substrate would not be common Germanic
anymore, but Early West Germanic. Some changes like
rhotacism, the loss of -z and gemination before *j may
probably be under way already. Which means that Latin [z]
from simple /s/ between vowels will probably be equated with
substrate voiceless [s] as Scandinavians do to this day.
The two changes which are most pan-Romance are of course the
reorganisation of the vowel system and the palatalization of
velars and dentals. As an allophonic process the latter may
indeed be of indefinite antiquity. compared to that the
palatalization of labials is a purely Gallican thing, and
possibly also rather late, since no tell-tale misspellings
are known from imperial age inscriptions AFAIK. So I think
/pj bj mj/ can stand, and later develop into /pp bb mm/ as
they would in West Germanic — /L/ and /J/ would probably
also be equated with substrate /lj nj/ and develop into /ll
nn/. I wouldn't even rule out that /tj/ and /kj/ be treated
as long and hence different from short /k/ / _{e, i} — cf.
how they are treated in Italian, though given the Gallican
/k;/ > /t;/ development CJ would perhaps merge with TJ, but
this merged /tt;/ might stay distinct from simplex /t;/ <
/k;/ in that the simplex develops k; > k; > ts; > ts_m (>
s_m) > [T], but the geminate remains long and ultimately is
treated like West Germ. *tj/tt.
PGmc. The /s/ is [s_a], so
I suppose to be ultra precise I should list WRom [s_m] > NRom [s_a].
That's not a mere nitpick, since [s_a] is more [S]-like and [s_m] is more [T]-like. In fact in modern Icelandic "/T/" is [s_m] and "/s/" is [s_a], both alveolar. It is known that in the history of Spanish the following series of changes took place: | s > s_a | > z_a > s_a | k', kj, tj > ts_m > s_m > T | k' > dz_m > z_m > s_m > T | g', j > dZ > S > x | S > x and it is believed that Old French had a similar situation, although there /s_a/ and /s_m/ merged with each other instead, and likewise with /z_a/ and /z_m/. So we can be quite assured that at some time OTL Western Romance had the following sibilant system: | ts_m s_a (tS) S | dz_m z_a dZ (Z) where the parenthesized items were either rare or lacking in some areas. Comparing this to the pre-West Germanic fricatives system I'd not be the least surprised if Germans learning Gallo- Romance would equate the foreign [ts_m] with their [T], especially if there wasn't yet any /ts/ in their Germanic language. The biggest problem to me is what they'd make of [S]. There was perhaps no x to equate it with any more, since Old High German consistently keeps /h/ from Germanic *x and /x/ from Germanic *k distinct, in which case I'd have [S] merge with /s_a/ in substratization. OTOH with a time of contact as early as the first century I'd slate [S] to be equated with *x and then develop to a /h/ distinct from the lost Latin *h. I have wondered for long how k' merged with tj in Gallo- and Ibero-Romance and come to the conclusion that it was *not* via a progression k; > c > tS > ts but rather that k' merged with tj directly. It is believable in that at least to the naked ear the two palatalized sounds k' and t' sound much more similar to each other than the non-palatalized k and t. But how come then that when g' and d' merge they both become /dZ/ and not both /dz/? Perhaps simply because d' was so infrequent to begin with? The variant spellings DAZA and DAIA for the same name suggest that merger in some direction did happen. An older generation of Romanists thought that g' in all positions went through a [j] stage before becoming /dZ/, and that this together with a prestige pronunciation of the letter _z_ as d' worked against a merger. It is notable that the lenited reflex of k' is _dz_ but that of g' is [j]! I wonder how Romance lengthening of vowels in stressed open syllables — in Iberian of all stressed vowels — and subsequent diphthongization would affect Northern Romance. The rising diphthongization of low mid [E:] and [O:] to /ie/ and /uo/ or similar is well nigh universal in Romance, but Old French also had high mid [e:] and [o:] become /ei/ and /ou/. Since OHG had both types of diphthong it is tempting to copy the Old French pattern in Northern Romance. OTOH Germanic had a very different vowel system from the VL one, so that it seems moot whether Northern Romance would preserve the distinction between two heights of mid vowels or merge them in the first place. Of course New High Germanican would still acquire _ei_ and _au_ from diphthongization of /i:/ and /u:/ at a later time. It is also moot whether open syllable lengthening would produce any minimal pairs. In Rhodrese I created at least the potential by letting open syllable lengthening precede syncope.