Re: Latin /j/ etc. (was: Latin <h>)

On Thursday, January 15, 2004, at 12:22 AM, Tristan McLeay wrote:

> On Wed, 14 Jan 2004, Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>
>> At 21:08 12.1.2004, Ray Brown wrote:
>>
>>> Not Sardinian - but 'twas so in Romanian.  Old French had [dZ].  One
>>> must
>>> remember that intervocalic /j/ was always geminate in Latin, i.e. [jj].
[snip]
> My revealing-ignorance question is how do we know that intervocalic /j/
> was always geminite in Latin?
Briefly:
1. The preceding syllable is always reckoned as heavy in Latin prosody.
This by itself, of course, doesn't prove gemination; an intervocalic /j/
could, for some reason, cause the preceding vowel to be lengthened; but it'
s
difficult to see why and i kow of no parallel examples in other natlangs.

2. The habit of people like Cicero of writing the [i} _twice- in such
positions, e.g. aiio (I say), eiius (his, her), peiius (worse) etc. (Of
course in modern reprints they tend to be "corrected" to one {i}). Also
the habit, for a time, of writing [jj] with an extra tall I in
inscriptions.

3. Etymology: inherited IE intervocalic /j/ was lost at an early date,
before
Latin was ever written, e.g. *monejo: --> moneo: (I advise), *trejes -->
tre:s (three). Where intervocalic -i- occurs in Latin, it is derived from
earlier [dj] (e.g. peius [pEjjUs] <-- *pedjos), [gj] (e.g. maius [majjUs]
<-- *magjos) or [sj] (e.g. quoius [k_wOjjUs] <-- *kwosjos.

4. Modern Romance, e.g. maio:re(m) --> Italian 'maggiore' /madZdZore/
(geminated voiced affricate).

5. The testimony of ancient grammarians such as Quintilian. I know the
ancient Greek & Roman grammarians didn't always get things right, but
this time it does accord with other evidence.

Ray
===============================================
http://home.freeuk.com/ray.brown
ray.brown@freeuk.com    (home)
raymond.brown@kingston-college.ac.uk   (work)
===============================================
"A mind which thinks at its own expense will always
interfere with language."         J.G. Hamann, 1760

Reply