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Pilovese in the Romance Language Family

From:Scotto Hlad <scott.hlad@...>
Date:Thursday, April 3, 2008, 2:20
I have struggled with this as I only know a limited amout about the tree of
Romance languages. (See Wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Romance_languages_improved.PNG)

I can see clearly that Pilovese is a Western Romance but I'm not sure
whether to categorize it as Gallo Romance or Iberian Romance. Some of the
sound changes look like French, some like Occitan, some like Portugues and a
few like Spanish.

I'm puzzling at the moment over a particular word which may push the
decision. It is the word for small as in small in stature.
French: petit
Occitan: petit
Portuguese: pequeno
Spanish: pequeno

As far as I have been able to determine they all descend from the word
pettittus or pitzinus or pisinnus which I presume are all the same word. Is
there anyone that can clarify this for me and perhaps show me how these
roots came to be pequeno? I can see how it got to petit and indeed the
Pilovese sound changes make it look like "pitit." I frankly don't like that
word. If it turns out that the derivation of pequeno pushes to a different
direction then it may be that this is Iberian Romance. I suspect that I have
not give enough information for further classification, perhaps someone can
give me more information to base my decision.

Scotto

Reply

Benct Philip Jonsson <melroch@...>