Re: Semantic mismappings

Quoting John Cowan <cowan@...>:

> Andreas Johansson scripsit:
>
> > So the present situation is that by
> > its own, _moear_ typically means "weapon", but in derived forms typically
> > still "sword", eg _moearbho_ "swordsman, fencer".
>
> This is not strange.  I forget the details, but Sino-Japanese has a
> morpheme that means "soup" by itself and "hot water" (the Chinese meaning)
> in compounds.  And in English, "with" as an independent morpheme is now
> firmly instrumental and comitative, but in old compounds ("withstand",
> "withdraw", etc.) still has its older meaning of opposition.
I didn't say it was strange - I said it was troblesome for translation purposes.

> > _Catearan_ is a bit troublesome too - I above translated it as
> > "sworn ones", since the root is the verb cat- "to swear (someone)
> > allegiance". _-ear_ is a more or less agental ending, and _-an_ the pl,
> > so more literally something like "swearers of allegiance", but with
> > the lexicalized implication that they are in the position of having
> > sworn someone allegiance, not that they currently are so swearing.
>
> I think "homagers" is what you want, those who have done homage and
> sworn fealty to a lord.  One could swear fealty without doing homage,
> specifically in the case where one held lands of two lords, in which case
> one could be homager of only one lord, and swore fealty to the second lord
> "saving the rights of" the first.  To do homage, as the word implies,
> is to "become [someone's] man of life and limb and earthly worship",
> where "worship" here has its older sense of "worth+ship", now preserved
> only in the line from the traditional marriage service: "with my body I
> thee worship".  "Fealty", though, is just French for "fidelity."
"Homager", then.

It should perhaps be noted that the political structure of the Chamant, altho I
describe it as "feudal", does not involve the granting of land. Neither is
military service seen as the primary point of the lord/lady~homager
relationship. There is, really, only two positions you can have in this system -
 either you are a lord/lady (_can_/_cea_), or a homager (_catear_). (In
practice, of course, you also get the children, but they don't count.)

> > Whether you openly renounce allegiance to your lord/lady, or just
> > silently betreys him/her, he/she has every right to have you executed
> > in a maximally painful way, but only in the later case does he/she have
> > any right to look down on you. In the former case you're an _achatear_,
> > with your honour intact, in the later a _goembho_ ['gwemBo], something
> > like "traitor", with your honour lost. Can anyone think of a convenient
> > way of making the distinction achatear~goembho in English?
>
> The technical term for terminating fealty is "defiance": a vassal could
> defy his lord, setting himself up as an independent lord or finding
> another lord to transfer his fealty to.  However, the widened meaning
> of "defy, defiance" would tend to overwhelm any narrow use of them in
> modern English.  The noun "defiant", however, never acquired an extended
> sense and is now archaic; it might be usable for "achatear".
Perhaps. Transfering fealty is possible (with the acceptance of both
lords/ladies involved), but that does not make you an _achatear_.

(In the Camant, a lord/lady can always "free" a homager, altho he/she would be
expected to do so only when majorly provoked - it's normally little short of
social murder.)

> As for "goembho", there is no doubt that "traitor" originally referred
> specifically to those who betrayed their lords.  This was the worst of
> crimes in mediaeval society, and Dante reserves the very bottom of Hell,
> just above Satan himself, for such sinners.  "Treason" and "traitor"
> later were narrowed to those who betrayed "their sovereign Lord the King"
> (later extended to other kinds of sovereigns; the U.S. Constitution
> takes the trouble to define treason, because it was so specifically a
> crime against the King's *person* that a new definition was needed for
> a newly kingless society).  "Betray" OTOH was widened to refer to anyone.
So, "defiant" vs "traitor". Well, probably using those for these meanings in an
English text would require little less explanation than sticking to the native
words ...

                                                                   Andreas