Re: Intelligentsia? Re: Adopting a plural

On Sat, 16 Oct 2004 14:22:36 -0000, caeruleancentaur <caeruleancentaur@...> wrote:
> "Cassell's New Latin Dictionary" has the entry "intellegere" derived
> from "inter" & "legere."
>
> Interestingly, Leo F. Stelten's "Dictionary of Ecclesiastical Latin"
> gives both "intellEgere" & "intellIgere."
Lewis & Short gives "intellego (less correctly intelligo)".

> Somewhere in the evolution of the word, the E of the root which changed to an I.
Yup.  It probably wasn't a phonological change either, but an analogical
one.  For a later compound one would expect "intellego" with an E.  But
an earlier compound would have already shifted it to "intelligo", under the
rule that short, non-initial vowels become "i" before single consonants (with
some exceptions, like r and dark l).

However there already existed several Latin compounds of "lego" that turned
it into "ligo", such as "colligo", "deligo", "diligo", "eligo", etc. so it's
not surprising that it might change to follow along with.

	*Muke!
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