Re: Arabic article (was: Corpses)

--- John Cowan <cowan@...> wrote:
> Barry Garcia scripsit:
>
> > So, in a sence, yes they do come from Midieval
> Latin, but that Latin got
> > some of them from Spanish, and some from French,
> according to Merriam
> > Webster (i'm more inclined to think they all
> traveled to Midieval Latin
> > via Spanish, since that was the area of Muslim
> learning in Europe).
>
> Well, "alchemy" clearly has a French form, but
> that's not to say that
> it didn't come into French from Spanish.
>
> Which leads us to the 64-peseta question: why were
> the Spanish so
> utterly unable to recognize the Arabic article as
> such, despite its
> strong semantic and even phonological resemblance to
> their own article?
> The surrounding Romance languages all have clitic
> articles, and have
> contributed a great deal of vocabulary to Spanish,
> but there has never
> been any question of borrowing words from them with
> the article still
> attached.
>
And not only that, but if you look at the equivilant
words in Catalan they frequently lack the fused
articles, so even the Catalans living right next to
them under the same Arabic influence recognized the
article and detatced it before borrowing.

Adam

=====
Fached il prori ul pañeveju djul atexindu mutu chu.
-- Carrajena proverb

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