Re: CHAT: History of «ir»

Elliott Lash wrote:
[snip]
>>These compounds are of course literary; AFAIK they
>>didn't survive in
>>Vulgar Latin. The hesitation in the perfect form of
>>_evadere_ might
>>suggest the perfect itself was a literary formation.
>>Interesting.
>>
>
> They are attested in French, however at least one may
> be some sort of borrowing:
>
> 1) s'evader
>   (clearly a borrowing, -d- is still present, and the
> infinitive ending is as if it is from *evadare)
Yes, clearly a learned borrowing made directly from Latin.

> 2) envahir
>    (Not so clearly a borrowing, it seems to show the
> confusion of infinitive endings that occured in Old
> French between -re (-ere), -oir (-e:re) and -ir (-ire)
> verbs. Also, the -d- is replaced by a hiatus,
> represented by -h-)
Yes the -d- has followed the normal development of [D] which
subsequently fell silent. I have checked and it does appear that this is
derived from a Gallo-Romance *invadíre where the verb has joined the 4th
conjugation. In modern French _envahir_ is a normal -ir verb, which is
what one would expect a Latin 4th conj. verb to be.

As far as I can tell, *invadíre seems to have been peculiar to
Gallo-Romance. There is no evidence AFAIK from Romance that _vadere_
joined the 4th conj. - indeed, there doesn't seem to be any evidence of
the survival of an infinitive form in Romance. I wonder if there was any
connexion in the popular mind between *invadíre and those forms of
_vadere_ that remained in popular use.

As far I see it, _vadere_ survived in Vulgar Latin only in the present
indicative & subjunctive, and in the imperative. Indeed, the -d- seems
to have disappeared even in VL of Gaul and Iberia; in the latter,
indeed, the verb seems to have joined the 1st conj, i.e. *vo, *vas,
*va(t), *vamus, *vatis, *van(t). It seems to have been similar in Gaul,
tho the French _vont_ must be derived from *vaunt. In French the
development of the present of _al(l)er_ (it had only one l in Old
French) has clearly be influenced by the conjugation of _avoir_.

It's all very interesting - but I guess someone must have already made a
study of the development of "to go" from Vulgar Latin to modern Romance.

--
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]

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