Re: Werewolf

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. ;)

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