Just a Little Taste of Judean (Part 3 :)

Gosh - a whole flurry of posts since I wrote my reply.  You've certainly
got us interested, Steg  :)

I'll not reply separately to all.
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[snip]
>
>>Only three declensions survived in spoken Latin, so with the effect of
>>analogy etc. we could end up with a system like this ('manus'
>>certainly
>>survived & joined the 2nd declension).  So we could have something
>>like
>>this (stress on penultimate syllable):
>
>>1st decl.
>>               SING.       PLURAL
>>construct     pela         pelar
>>absolute      pele         pelaru
>>(I rather liked pfela ;)
>>
[etc snipped]

......
>
>I like it, it's certainly more plausible...and i like the shift from
>cases to states,
Thanks - I kinda liked it too.  It seemed a neat shift from the Latin
declension to the Semitic construct/ absolute state constructions.

>although i didn't actually mean that when i rationalized
>about the absolute state.
I thought maybe you didn't - but I was trying to put your rationalization
into a Latin-based context.

>Although i don't quite get the stages in the evolution of the
>words....how do the Nom&Acc and Gen&Dat mergings happen?
That actually has happened in Romanian.  Briefly: the ablative case was
first casualty, merging with the accusative in spoken Latin well before the
end of the BC period.  The neuters never distinguished between Nom. & Acc.
and there was a strong move, even in the Classical language, to bring the
two cases together in plural forms; it seems that even in the singular in
some areas they were falling together quite early on.

The pronouns in all the Romance langs show that the dative & genitives had
fallen together here; generally we find the sigular is derived from a
dative (cf. French 'lui' <-- 'illui' and 'leur' <-- 'illo:rum').

In modern Romanian we have a two-case system for nouns & adj. as well as
pronouns: one derived from the Nom+Acc and the other from the Gen+Dat.
Judean Romance, as part of an eastern Romance grouping, is likely to have
developed along similar lines.

>And how come you shortened the long vowels before the -ru ?
I haven't exactly - the vowel carries the stress.  The long-short
distinction simply did not survive as such in Romance; this quantitative
distinction gave way to a _qualitative_ distinction between high-low or
tense-lax (the higher vowels being tenser) except for /a/ where the long &
short forms coalesced.

Therefore we find in stressed syllables:
/a/ and /a:/  -->   /a/
/e/ --> /E/
/e:/ --> /e/
/i/ --> /I/
/i:/ --> /i/
/o/ --> /O/
/o:/ --> /o/
/u/ --> /U/
/u:/ --> /u/

There was a distinct tendency for /E/ and /O/ to diphthongize to /jE/ and /wO/.

In unstressed syllables the pattern was simpler, but the details differ for
western & eastern Romance.

>I need to learn some Latin....maybe i should wait until after this wave
>of schoolwork to really get into this, hrmph.
Yep - and maybe read up on Vulgar Latin.  Fortunately the Romance group is
probably has more written about it than most other language groups.
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[RHOTACISM]
At 1:03 pm -0500 11/4/99, Tom Wier wrote:
>"Raymond A. Brown" wrote:
>> Also in eastern Romance we know that final -s did not survive; it either
>> disappeared or changed to some voiced palatal sound.  So the NomAcc plural
>> would likely to be /puellaZ/ or /puellaj/ - but maybe under the influence
>> of 'puellaru' we find 'puellar'  :)   Also in some Greek dialects final -s
>> regularly became -r.  It's known among scholars as 'rhotacism' and we could
>> imagine it occuring in 'proto-Judean'.
>
>Right -- but wasn't that relatively early? I mean, way before the period
>we're talking about here, right? Like, before Classical Greek.
No.

Probably had happened in Elean & Eretrian dialects before the Classical
period, but certainly was still alive through and beyond the Classical
Greek period in these dialects, not giving way to Attic koine till the 3rd
cent. BC.

But more more interestingly, it is not attested in Lakonian before the 2nd
cent. BC. and is attested in inscriptions as late as the the 2nd cent. AD.,
which is, I assume, within the period we're talking about.  Indeed, it
survives to the present day in Tzakonian which is derived from the ancient
Lakonian dialect.  So it was definitely still around among some Greek
speakers, at least, in 'proto-Judean' times.
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[FINAL -M]
I think this is a red herring.  No actual Romance lang has actually
restored this long lost sound!  And the way 20th cent. Anglophones
pronounce Latin is IMHO quite irrelevant.  I think Tom Weir has dealt with
this well  :)

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[ARTICLE & DEMONSTRATIVES]

Classical Latin had quite an array of demonstratives; I quote, giving the
nom. sing. masc., fem. & neuter in the traditional manner:

(a) is, ea, id
The "general  purpose" demonstrative, much like French 'ce, cette' etc.

(b) hic, haec, hoc
this (near me) - Fr. ce.....-ci

(c) iste, ista, istud
that (near you), that (of yours)

(d) ille, illa, illud
that (yonder)  (ce....la')

We must also include:
(e) ipse, ipsa, ipsum
And emphasizing adjective meaning 'herself', 'himself', itself', 'myself'
etc. in sentences like: "She herself said this" "I'll do it myself" etc.

All of (a) to (d) could be and were used as 3rd person pronouns also.

In Vulgar Latin we find:
(a) does not survive.
(b) practically disappears except in odd survival like French 'avec' <--
'ab ho:c'; Spanish 'ahora', Portuguese 'agora' <-- ha:c ho:ra:
(c) Takes on a new lease of life as "this" and, contrary to what was said
in one posting, survives in all the modern Romance langs.
(d) Survives now with three different uses:
i. meaning 'that' cf. Italian 'quello' <-- ecco illu(d); Spanish 'aquel'
<-- accu ille.
ii. 3rd person pronouns
iii. Definite article.

(e) Becomes 'isse' etc in the spoken language and survives in Iberian
Romance as 'eso' with meanings not dissimilar from Classical Latin 'iste'.
It also survives in Italian 'esso' etc.  Furthermore, it also long survived
in many dialects as 3rd person pronoun & as the definite article.
Sardinian still uses such as 'sa', 'so' as definite article.

Modern French has changed most radically: 'ce, cette' etc (<-- ecce iste)
are now used as adjective only, while 'celui, celle' etc (<-- ecce ille)
are now used only as pronouns.

The prefixed 'ecce', 'ecco', 'accu' meant "lo, behold" and seems readily to
have been added to demostratives :)

Now - if you follow what is known of Romance tradition then your def.
article must derive either from (il)le or from (is)se.  But it is just
possible, I guess, that the Hebrew ha- might give life to the very moribund
hic, haec, hoc so that it survived here as the definite article.   The main
problem is that the initial /h/ was certainly silent in spoken Latin at
this time.

The Greek article in the nom. masc. & fem. also had the forms {ho}, {he:}
(sing) and {hoi}, {hai} plural, but again /h/ was fast disappearing.
However, the Greek forms and the Latin 'hic' etc could, I guess, have
coalesced with 'ha-', giving Judean a distinctive definite article.   (I'm
pretty sure there was a bit of Arabic influence in getting the Italian 'il'
and Spanish 'el' instead of 'lo' [I know the latter is used in Spanish as a
neuter article :) ], so this is maybe not implausible).

I wouldn't BTW worry too much about the final -c of hic etc.  It wasn't
there in all the forms of this very irregular (and certainly moribund)
demonstrative (it began life as an enclitic -ce meaning "here", cf.
colloquial English "this 'ere").  If we imagine a 'coalescing' of 'ha-',
Greek 'ho' etc. and this fast dying Latin demonstrative, I think the final
-c can safely be ignored.

So there you have it.  Use a form derived from ille, like all the major
modern Romancelangs; use a form derived from isse as some minor
Romancelangs still do; be original and argue for a ha-, ho, ho(c)
coalescence.  I guess I know what Steg will do  :)

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Finally my thanks to Adam Walker & Tom Weir for reminding me about Yevanic.
I had come across mention of it before, but had forgotten.

Ray.