ipse (was: No pronoun, no article)
| From: | Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> |
|---|
| Date: | Wednesday, October 22, 2003, 17:42 |
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On Tuesday, October 21, 2003, at 09:48 , Christian Thalmann wrote:
> --- In conlang@yahoogroups.com, Adam Walker <carrajena@Y...> wrote:
>
>> Interesting info. I thought about deriving
>> Carrajena's pronouns from "ipse", but ended up
>> deriving them from "illum", "illam", "illud" with
>> corruption from "eum", "eam" and "id" which gave
>> "jun", "jan" and "jid".
>
> You can still use "ipse" as an intensifier, as Jovian does...
But not in the actual Vulgar Latin spoken *here*.
At some period in spoken Latin, the original intensifying use
of 'ipse' got replaced by 'ipsimus' /issimus/ (with superlative
ending). In the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire it had become
*metissimus
In Classical Latin -met exists as a pronominal _suffix_ intensifier,
e.g. egomet (I myself), mihimet (to me, myself)
Also attested are: memet, nosmet, nobismet, tutemet, tibimet, vosmet.
We even find 'meamet' where it's suffixed to a possessive adjective.
One suspects that in the spoken language 'met' had a more independent
existence before ending up _prefixed_ to *issimus.
Anway, from VL *metissimu(m) we get:
Italian: medesimo
French: même (<-- Old Fr. mesme ~ meisme ~ medesme ~ medisme)
Spanish: mismo
Portuguese: mesmo
Ray
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