Re: Pilovese in the Romance Language Family

Meyer-Lübke's "Romanisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch"
rejects a connexion with PAUCUS as phonologically
untenable.  He's somewhat kinder to a connexion
with PUTUS but rejects that too on the grounds
that -INUS isn't productive in Rumanian, although
IMHO the wide spread of the word within Romance
(Ibero-Romance, Italian dialects, Balkan Romance and
borrowed into Albanian) makes that objection somewhat
doubtful.  Meyer-Lübkes conclusion is that the root of
the Spanish _pequeño_ is unknown.  I have seen it
cited elsewhere as a Wanderwort of unknown origin.

FWIW Tolkien obviously supported the Wanderwort
hypothesis: he was in the habit of providing words
of unknown origin in European languages with Elvish
etymologies, and indeed there is an Elvish _*pikina_
meaning 'small'! :-)

/BP

Scotto Hlad skrev:
> So then pequeno and poco come from the same root? I was under the
> understanding that poco was from paucus and pequeno as I had described in my
> previous email.  Paucus gave then poco peu pauc.
>
> According to
> http://users.servicios.retecal.es/amnuve/dicllion/dicciona/pendon.htm
>
> Pequeno is derived from pitzinus. Can you help me find the derivation that
> you have said here? Thanks for your response :-)
>
> Scotto
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Constructed Languages List [mailto:CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu] On
> Behalf Of caeruleancentaur
> Sent: Wednesday, April 02, 2008 8:29 PM
> To: CONLANG@listserv.brown.edu
> Subject: Re: Pilovese in the Romance Language Family
>
>> Scotto Hlad <scott.hlad@...> wrote:
>
>> French: petit
>> Occitan: petit
>> Portuguese: pequeno
>> Spanish: pequeno
>
>> Is there anyone that can clarify this for me and perhaps show me how
>> these roots came to be pequeno?
>
> "Pequeno" comes from a different root, the Latin "paucus" meaning little or
> few.  English derivatives are paucity, Paul, paraffin, poor, foal, filly,
> pony, puerile, pedo-.  The PIE root is pou- or pau-.
>
> Charlie
>
>
>