Re: Which is simpler: /y/ or /iw/?

Quoting "Mark J. Reed" <markjreed@...>:

> On Wed, Jun 4, 2008 at 11:53 AM, Andreas Johansson <andjo@...> wrote:
> >> Ah, so it took a side trip.  Well, that explains the existence of a
> >> discrepancy,
>
> > I don't think it explains anything.
>
> Sure it does: it pushes the question back on to the Romance speakers.
> No longer is it English borrowing things differently; it's Latin
> changing internally.  Poof, no longer my problem. ;-)
>
> Ray pointed out offlist that "simplicare" did exist in Classical
> Latin, while "simplificare" is not attested; yet clearly the latter
> must have existed in Medieval Latin to give rise to French
> "simplifier".  So the mystery is, what happened to the Latin word in
> between?
Perhaps, confronted with forms like French _simple_, the medievals felt that the
root was _simpl-_ rather than _simplic-_, and reidentified the now anomalous
_-ic-_ with the _(-i)fic-_ common enough in causatives? (_-ficare_ is related to
_facere_ "make") Just a guess.

Alternatively, the Classical form (which isn't listed in my Latin dictionary and
I therefore suspect might have been rare) was just forgotten and Medieval Latin
invented a new verb for the same meaning using the same root.

--
Andreas Johansson