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Re: Werewolf

From:Benct Philip Jonsson <bpjonsson@...>
Date:Friday, September 22, 2006, 18:57
R A Brown skrev:
> Henrik Theiling wrote: > [snip] >> Would you happen to know until when the term 'versipellis' was know to >> Romans or whether it was a Vulgar Latin word at all? > > As a compound it would understood by Romans as "skin-changer" - but > whether it had any currency in colloquial use is rather doubtful. > >> The dictionaries say it is used by Plautus, > > Plautus used it as an epithet of Jupiter. Later writers Pliny, Petronius > & Appuleius use it to mean "werewolf." > >> but I have no clue how much it is used by >> ordinary people, too, and how long. > > As far as I know, there is no indication that the word was much used (if > at all) in colloquial speech. The evidence of the Romancelangs is that > the the word didn't make it into Vulgar Latin. > >> Did it leave any trace in modern Romance? > Not that I am aware of. > >> Elliot asked for the word and before that, I assumed Latin had none so >> I compounded 'man-worf' in Þrjótrunn. > > All the modern Romancelangs have formed some sort of compound, whether > of 'man' + 'wolf' as in Spanish _hombre lobo_ (Thinks: that is a counter > example, isn't it?) or Portuguese _lobisomem_. Or an special epithet > added to wolf to make it clear that it's one of those 'humanoid wolves', > like French 'loup-garou' or Italian 'lupo mannaro'. > >> But if it is used in Vulgar Latin, > > It wasn't - you're compound is likely, given the scenario of your language. > >
As it happens _ulf(s)hamr_ and _vera í ulf(s)hami_ '(to be in) wolfs-shape' is the more usual expression in Old Norse. Indeed it seems _varulfr_ is not attested in ON! This may or may not affect your decision WRT Þrjótrunn. Anyway it clearly implies a man in wolf-shape rather than a wolf in man-shape. =============================== 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 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
Since R3 has loss of *secondary* final single nasals the nominative (H)OMO might end up as _-óu_, though it is unlikely that the nominative would prevail. But would [h] really be preserved long enough for any *luphomine with [p_h] to arise in VL? After all the even older and supposedly h-ful Romans did not distinguish phi from pi in their borrowings.
> [snip] >> 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'
And apparently _nm > *mm_ too since ANIMA > Fr. _âme_, 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_?
>> -- 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_. 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, 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...
>> 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. >
In my ignorance I used 'ecclesiatical' in the general sense of 'used by some ordained Catholics'. That may be stylistically and/or terminologically wrong. -- /BP 8^) -- B.Philip Jonsson mailto:melrochX@melroch.se (delete X) ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ "Truth, Sir, is a cow which will give [skeptics] no more milk, and so they are gone to milk the bull." -- Sam. Johnson (no rel. ;)

Replies

Henrik Theiling <theiling@...>
R A Brown <ray@...>Romance miscellanea (was: Werewolf)