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Re: New Brithenig words, part Deux.

From:Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Tuesday, May 29, 2001, 6:05
At 7:48 pm -0400 27/5/01, John Cowan wrote:
>Raymond Brown scripsit: > >> >In other >> >words, you have to assume that the nominative plural survived as in >>Italian, >> >not the accusitive pl. /-o:s/ as in Spanish, French etc. >> >> Hang on - the nominative _did_ survive in Old French, cf. >> SINGULAR PLURAL >> Nominative: murs mur >> Oblique: mur murs > >But then it died almost without a trace, except for special cases like pretre >< PRESBYTER and on < HOMO.
I'm aware of that - but the nominative did survive into the early middle ages in both French and Provençal and thus could equally well have survived till then in early Brithenig. If i-umlaut were to be a feature, it would've given time for it to have its effect on 2nd declension nouns. Once established, and its origin forgotten, it could have extended to the acc. plural by analogy. I'm not advocating this in Brithenig or any other Romance-conlang, but it would be a possibility if one wanted.
>Anyway, it turns out that the Italian plural endings aren't really from the >nom. either, it just looks that way. Consider adj. "magnifico", fem. pl. >"magnifiche" /-ke/. If this were from MAGNIFICAE, it would have been >"magnifice" /-tSe/; instead, it is from MAGNIFICAS, with loss of "-s".
I know. The evidence is pretty conclusive that the nom. & acc, plural of 1st decl. feminines were both -as in the Vulgar Latin period. The Rumanian and Italian plural -e developed from -as --> -*aj --> -e; likewise the 3rd decl. plural developed -es --> -*ej --> -i. But it is also clear that the 2nd dec. mascs. retained two separate plural cases in Vulgar Latin, i.e. -i (nom.) and -os (acc). The Rumanian & Italian -i could result from -os --> -*oj --> -i, and certainly in part does so. But the nominative was alive enough to cause palatalization in common words, cf. Italian: amica ~ amiche <-- VL amica ~ amicas amico ~ amici /a'mitSi/ <-- amico ~ amici Ray. ========================================= A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language. [J.G. Hamann 1760] =========================================

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