Re: Comparison Þrjótrunn - Icelandic - Latin

Hi!

Benct Philip Jonsson writes:
>...
> No matter when BETULA is attested, it is unlikely that
> the Germanic-substrate Romance *there* would use a
> Gaulish loan-word.
Of course, that is the main reason: when someone invades places that
have strange plants, the local name may get a change.  And Gaulish has
only minor influence on the vocab.

> I must remember to have the Slavic word for 'birch' in Slvanjek.
> BTW how do you handle the points of the compass, where Romance
> *here* uses Germanic loans?
I have thought about that, but did not yet decide anything, waiting
for further input -- maybe I read something accidentally, or someone
mentions something.  E.g.:

> I used Slavic loans in Slvanjek.  (However the problem in the
> Þrjótrunn universe is rather what the South Romance languages
> *there* use.  Italian has the alternatives _levante_, _ponente_ and
> _messogiorno(*)_, but I don't know if there is any alternative for
> 'north'.
That's interesting and will be piled on the heap of information needed
to come to a conclusion. :-)

BTW, one recent decision was about the 'leg'.  VL '*gamba' from
Gaulish, too, and I did not like the 'perna' that is used in Sp.  and
Port.  Now Þrjótrunn is the only (known) language (yet) which uses
'cru:s' (shank) for 'leg', which becomes 'krýr'.

>...
> >> And how does _animal_ become _aðal_?  I can see
> >> unstressed posttonic _nim_ become _nn_, but whence
> >> _nn_ > _ð_?
> >> ...
> > Some words shifted /nm/ > /Dm/.  The /m/ dropped in forms with double
> > syncope */aDmli/ > /aDli/, simplifying the cluster, and this spread to
> > the unsyncopated forms, too.
>...
>
> Yes, I knew about *nnr > Dr, but have missed *nm > *Dm,
> though I guess English _fathom_ and Icelandic _faðm_
> against Swedish _famn_ may be an instance.
The alternative would have been to use /nm/ > /mm/, which is given
some likelyness by Noreen (who also states that /nm/ > /nn/ is
unlikely for some reason).  Anyway, this is a borderline case with
obviously few examples in Germanic.

>...
> As for *mn it first merged with */bn/ and then became [vn]
> along with it, or in the light of Icelandic [nab_0n] the
> [B] never became labiodental in this combo in that language.
>...
I just tried to keep my post brief. :-)

>...
> > Yes, that's a funny one. :-)
> > I'm also having some problems of this kind with a/o-declension pairs
> > in Þrjótrunn, e.g. 'filia' vs. 'filius'.  Latin only had to
> > disambiguate the dat.pl. in -i:s (there is 'filia:bus' for this
> > reason).  But in Þrjótrunn, many more forms collapse.
>
> Perhaps 'daughter' is from FILIOLA while 'son' is from
> FILIUS.  BTW have a look at 'Knabe' and 'Mädchen' in the
> all too scanty German-Romance index at the end of Meyer-
> Lübke's dictionary.
Ah, thanks.  Will do that as soon as the bookbinders gives back my
repaired book. :-)  (For filius/filiola, this will probably create
a -l- vs -ll- contrast.  Funny. :-))

>... _-ina_ ...
That's also interesting. :-)

> > Ah, and 'cattus' is another Latin loan in Icelandic, so I can quite
> > safely enter a new word (köttur) into the lexicon. :-)
>
> Shouldn't it be _kattur_, as there is no reason to
> suppose it became a u-stem in Northern Romance *there*?
Hmm?  I think I don't understand.  It's a normal masculine noun of the
2nd declension.  The stem is 'katt-'.

**Henrik

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