Re: Origin of "rien" and "res"?

Adam F. skrev:
 > Does anyone know the origins of two words "rien" and
 > "res". They are both the words for "nothing" the first
 > is French and the second Catalan. I wonder if they are
 > cognates, but I can't find anything about it online.
 > This is for a conlang project so I thought maybe someone
 > would know.
 >
 > Thanks, Adam
 >
 >
 >

Meyer-Lübke doesn't list the Catalan _res_, but as others
have already said the French _rien_ is from _rem_, the
accusative of lATIN _res_ 'thing'. People said things like
_Non video rem_ 'I don't see a thing', and it got
reinterpreted (perhaps by Germanic speakers?) as 'I don't
see nothing'.

Henrik Theiling skrev:

 > There was a discussion about this on Ideolengua a while
 > ago (Nov 2004 to be more precise) and it was said that
 > Catalan 'res' is indeed from Latin 'res'

I would be surprised if it was from the *nominative
singular* _res_. The accusative plural _res_ is a much
likelier candidate. (Yes the N.sg., N.pl. and A.pl. all are
identical!)

BTW there are other funny words for 'nothing' in Romance:
Spanish _nada_ comes from people saying _Non video rem
natam_ 'I don't see a born thing_, and Italian _niente_,
French _néant_ Provençal _neen/nien_ comes from _ne inde_.
For some reason _inde_ 'from there' came to be reinterpreted
as _that_ and _ne inde_ as 'nothing'. The _en_ in French _je
en crois_ comes from _inde_.

I'm mulling over whether _ne inde_ might become _neend >
nein > nain_ rather than _neend > nien_ in my Romlang #3.
Since the _e_ in _ne_ was long and the _i_ in _inde_ long
they would both become Vulgar Latin /I/, so the resulting
/nIInde/ -- reflected as Provençal _neen_ -- should
arguably be able to go either way. I don't think Provençal
_nien_, Italian _niente_ carry too much weight since Pr.
normally doesn't diphthongize mid vowels, and Italian has VL
/E:/ > _ie_ but normally not VL /e:/ > _ei_, unlike R#3,
which has /e:/ > _ei_ > _ai_.
--


/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

    a shprakh iz a dialekt mit an armey un flot

                                 (Max Weinreich)

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