Re: No pronoun, no article
| From: | Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> |
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| Date: | Tuesday, October 21, 2003, 18:41 |
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On Monday, October 20, 2003, at 09:56 , John Cowan wrote:
> Christophe Grandsire scripsit:
>
>> It seems to be common indeed. The case of Sardinian "so" from Latin
>> "ipse": "same", shows that other roads are possible, but the deictic way
>> seems to be preferred. the evolution of indefinite singular
>
> I think that "ipse" became a demonstrative first in Vulgar Latin.
You think correctly :)
'ipse' became used as an anaphoric, replacing 'is', 'ea', 'id',
becoming 'isse', 'issa', etc in the process. This spelling is found
as as early as the 1st century CE in Pompeii.
It lives on in modern Italian 'esso' "he", 'essa' "she", 'essi' & 'esse'
"they";
Catalan 'ese', 'esa', 'esos', 'esas' "this/these"; and Portuguese 'êsse',
'essa',
'êsses', 'essas' "this/these".
So, sorry Christophe, all the Romance definite articles are derived
from Vulgar Latin deictics.
Ray
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