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Capsicum skrev:
Which origin do the Italian suffix '-accio' and the Raeto-Romance
'-atsch'?
Could you help me with that question? I did not find a good candidate for the origin in Latin. Durich Chiampell used '-atium' he seemed to have invented himself to make Latin versions of Raetic topographic names. I would rather use '*-acium' or similar. He explaned the suffix as meaning that something is very big. Italian '-accio' is pejorative.
It's from -aceus, which originally denoted "made from X", but then came to denote "full of X", whence it got both an augmentative and pejorative meaning; you can imagine what they were full of! :-) Already in Latin there was a variant -ICEUS with long I. As you probably know Italian also has a variant _-uccio_. The spelling variants with _-acius, -atius, -ateus_ of course arose because in Vulgar Latin short E and I before a vowel merged as /j/, and in the western parts of the empire soft C and TJ merged as /ts/ -- though not in the east like Italian. Still there seem to have been times and places were speakers hesitated between /ts/ and /tS/, so that even words and morphemes which originally had /tj/ could get /tS/ perhaps mostly from analogical influence by other words and morphemes which had /tS/; that's probably how _-uccio_ arose from -UTEUS through influence from -ACEUS and -ICEUS. In the dialectal meltingpot of the late Empire and later it seems analogy could even 'restore' a /k/ in words which originally had /tj/: thus in some dialects PUTEUS became PITTJUS, and then in still others PIKKJUS -- probably because /ttj/ tended to stay as /ttj/ after the simplex /tj/ had become /ts/, and this rare /ttj/ sounded too similar to /kkj/ to stay distinct. Then speakers of central Italian dialects adapted this PIKKJUS as PICCULUS, because they knew that their own -CUL- corresponded to /kj/ in some other dialects, and so they hypercorrected it to /kol/ because they thought that every /kj/ in those other dialects should correspond to /kol/ in their own. This is a bit like when British actors try to speak American and pronounce _dawn_ as /dOrn/, because they know that in most cases (like _torn_) their own /O/ corresponds to /Or/ in American English.
In Langobardic Latin, which I like much, I found a suffix '-aci', used in names of people. It can't mean something very mean because the call themselves by the suffixed Names.
That's originally a Celtic suffix used in names of peoples, quite distinct from -ACEUS. Also it had hard C in the spoken language, because there was no /j/ involved in it. France is shock full of placenames in -ACUM, but they exist also in other places. In northern France the C was usually dropped, so you get e.g. ANIACUM > Agny, but in southern France you still get -ac. BTW check out this site, you'll love it! <http://www.columbia.edu/acis/ets/Graesse/contents.html>
At one passage there is somebody called 'Thomaciolo' (an ablative, I think). That looks like he got another suffix after '-aci'.
This on the other hand is -ACEUS. Some big -- or mean -- fellow named Thomas got called THOMACEUS, and then some small Thomas who resembled him got called THOMACEULUS -- or perhaps it was one fellow who was small and mean!
I am sorry for asking such things all the time. It is just so hard to find out that myself. I always think long and look elsewere, before I make a post.
It's only by asking that you learn anything. Check out this, it's full of answers: <http://ia311026.us.archive.org/2/items/introductiontov00grangoog/introductiontov00grangoog.pdf>
Thank you for reading that and I am hoping for a good anwer.
Well, they say the quality of an answer depends on the quality of the question. Yours was a good question, and I hope you find mine a good answer. /BP 8^)> -- Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "C'est en vain que nos Josu�s litt�raires crient � la langue de s'arr�ter; les langues ni le soleil ne s'arr�tent plus. Le jour o� elles se *fixent*, c'est qu'elles meurent." (Victor Hugo)