Re: Hadwan stress system renewed

On Wed, 1 Aug 2001, John Cowan wrote:

> dirk elzinga wrote:
>
> > One of my very favorite examples in historical linguistics
> > is the multiple borrowing into English of the French word
> > 'gentil'. From it we get gentle, gentile, genteel, and jaunty
> > (in that order).
>
>
> I have my doubts about "gentile", which looks (m-w.com agrees)
> to come direct from Latin.
Ah. Well, there is still the nice triplet of gentle, genteel,
and jaunty. And the pedagogical point to be made is still the
same (I use this example in my Intro to the study of language
courses); the borrowings show varying degrees of nativization.

> A nice set is dish, dais, desk, disk/disc, and discus, all ultimately
> from Latin DISCUS -- itself of Greek origin -- through different
> pathways.  (Respectively: OE, ME from French, ME from Italian, and the
> last two direct from Latin).
I'll remember this one, too.

Dirk

--
Dirk Elzinga                          dirk.elzinga@m.cc.utah.edu

"The strong craving for a simple formula
has been the undoing of linguists."               - Edward Sapir