Romance miscellanea (was: Werewolf)

Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:

>
> I (BPJ) asked:
>
>>> Might LUPONE be a possible formation?
>
> And Ray replied:
>
>> ?Vulgar Latin *lupone would presumably mean "wolflet', methinks.
>
> I was thinking of the use of -ONE as an augmentative/deprecative.
I know in Italian -one has an augmentative role but in Gaul it seems to
have had a diminutive role. I am far from certain whether -ONE had a
clear, single role in VL.

>>> I guess one might get
>>> _lobóu_ from LUPU HOMO in R3, but how realistic would *that* be?
>>
>> One could imagine *luphomo (gen. *luphominis) - where |ph| = [p_h] -
>> being formed as a calque of the Greek 'lykanthropos'. This would have
>> given a Vulgar Latin *lupOmne
>
> But would [h] really be preserved long enough for
> any *luphomine with [p_h] to arise in VL?
No - *luphomo as such could only have been coined as calque in the
literary language. That no such calque is found is probably due to the
fact that the educated were fairly bilingual and would readily have used
the Greek word if necessary. After all we don't feel the need to form
English calque form the French 'rendez-vous'.

If such a calque had been formed and had it made its way into VL, it
would have had the form *lu'pOm(i)ne

>>
>>> assuming HOMINE > *omne > *omme > /uom/, provided that
>>> M'N > mm *is* a realistic change for a Romance language
>>
>> It happened in Old French, i.e. (h)omme = 'man'
Also, of course, _da(m)me_ <-- dom(i)na (I've never found a satisfactory
explanation for the vocalism of French. (Both spellings - damme, dame -
are found in Old French)

>
> And apparently _nm > *mm_ too since ANIMA > Fr. _âme_,
_anme_ is found in Old French.

> with regressive assimilation, which is actually more
> readily expectable than progressive assimilation of
> _mn/m'n > *mm_ -- though I don't see where the circum-
> flex in _âme_ comes from, since there never was any
> /s/ in that word; perhaps there was a back nasal [A~]
> in OF which denasalized to a back /A/ spelled _â_?
Not all circumflexes weep over lost S - nor are all lost Ss remembered
by a circumflex e.g. école <-- sc(h)ola. |â| denoted, as you rightly
say, /A/ which was still distinguished from /a/ when I learnt French in
the 1950s (I understand that the distinction is now generally ignored in
21st cent France).

Yes, _anme_ was of course /a~m@/ (no regressive assimilation of
consonants). /a~/ became pronounced as [A~] and the rest is as you say
above.

>>> -- I want it to be but I'm not so sure!  What's the track by which
>>> HOMINE became _homme_ but HOMO became _on_ in French?
>>
>>
>> The nom. (h)Omo --> /Om/ --> /0~/. The later was spelled _(h)om_ in Old
>> French. But the sound /O~/ could equally well be spelled *(h)on, and
>> when it became dissociated from _(h)omme_ and took on a new role as a
>> pronoun, the simple spelling _on_ was adopted. *There never was a change
>> /m/ --> /n/*
>
>
> OK, and both *mn > *mm and *nm > *mm are attested changes, which
> is well and good for me.  Somehow _dom_ 'feels' better than _don_
> for R3, and even though mb > m / _# R3 would otherwise end up
> with very few words in final _-m_.  In fact I have 'trouble'
> with the first person plural of verbs, where I don't want to
> lose _m_.
It wasn't lost in Gaul. The familiar French -ons is from Latin -umus
(with both Us short), which was a popular form of the 3rd conj. where
Classical Latin has -imus. In the VL of Gaul this became -om(s)s  -->
-ons (and the rest, as they say, is history :)

I'm thinking that perhaps secondary final _-m_ was
> lost before primary final _-s_, so that the _m_ in HABEMUS
> wasn't final at the time the _m_ in POMUM or DECIMUM was lost.
> So I'll have to have this order of changes:
>
> (1) *abemos  >  *abems, *pomo > *pom
>
> (2) *pom  >  po
>
> (3) *abems > abem
>
> and I'm not quite sure how realistic that is,
Not unrealistic, I'd say.

> especially
> since I don't want words like SENSU > *sens to be affected
> by (3).  Would something like
>
> (1') *pomo  > pom
>
> (2') *abemos > abemo
>
> (3') *pom  > po
>
> (4') *abemo > abem
>
> really be realistic?  It feels very ad hoc...
Yep - that does feel more ad_hoc to me also.


>>> And what's the story behind DOMINU > _Dom_ as an ecclesiatical
>>> appellative (if that is the right word?)
>>
>> Used AFAIK principally by the Benedictine order.
Used by the Benedictine & Cistercian orders only. And as I said in
another email, I think it was simply a shortening of the medieval Latin
_Domnus_ (also occasionally found even in Classical Latin), rather than
a borrowing from any Romancelang.

> In my ignorance I used 'ecclesiatical' in the general
> sense of 'used by some ordained Catholics'.
Used for all monks of the Benedictine order; I believe the Cistercians
use it only for abbots.

--
Ray
==================================
ray@carolandray.plus.com
http://www.carolandray.plus.com
==================================
Nid rhy hen neb i ddysgu.
There's none too old to learn.
[WELSH PROVERB}