Re: Pequeno (was Re: Pilovese in the Romance Language Family)

On 4.4.2008 Eric Christopherson wrote:
 > On Apr 3, 2008, at 1:57 PM, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
 > > You may have noticed that I avoided stating a personal
 > > opinion, but
 > I
 > > actually believe there must have been a root *pik- in
 > > some substrate language **in Italy** which got picked up
 > > into Vulgar Latin in two different dialect forms
 > > */pikkin/ and */pik;k;in/, plus possibly an unsuffixed
 > > form */pikk/ which then spread across the empire with VL
 > > itself.
 >
 > I think it's possible that the variation tt ~ kk ~ kk;
 > ~ ts might have come from "childish" pronunciations of
 > the word;

True, so the 'substrate' may be Latin babytalk!

I wonder if Swedish _pytte_, babytalk for 'very small' is
'related'...

 > Grandgent's _Introduction to Vulgar Latin_ has the same
 > hypothesis to the variation -iclus ~ -ittus ~ -iccus. The
 > semantics of those forms would seem to make them apt to be
 > said in baby talk.
 >

In which case PIZZINU may come from *PICLINU. To be sure
_piccolino_ 'small thing' exists in Italian!

 > (I remember that one time I had the same hyphothesis about
 > the English words little ~ lickle ~ ickle, and looked up
 > their etymologies, but now I can't find them... so I don't
 > know if they are relevant.)

Deletion of initial consonants occurs in one phase of
toddlers' language development, so it seems likely. FWIW
Swedish babytalk also has _ytteliten_ which is even smaller
than _pytteliten_! :-)

/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch atte melroch dotte se
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
   "C'est en vain que nos Josués littéraires crient
   à la langue de s'arrêter; les langues ni le soleil
   ne s'arrêtent plus. Le jour où elles se *fixent*,
   c'est qu'elles meurent."           (Victor Hugo)

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