Re: New Brithenig words, part Deux.

At 9:37 pm +0000 28/5/01, kam@CARROT.CLARA.NET wrote:
>Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote :
[snip]
>> Hang on - the nominative _did_ survive in Old French, cf.
>>                     SINGULAR     PLURAL
>>          Nominative:  murs        mur
>>             Oblique:  mur         murs
>Yes, that looks familiar.
>
[snip]
>
>> Why?  It's clear from Old French that not only did the -i nominative plural
>> of the 2nd. decl. survive in Gaul, it actually got extended to some 3rd
>> dec. nouns ...
>
>Thanks, Ray, it's a good job there's someone here who knows what they're
>talking about. Because Brithenig uses the acc. pl. like Spanish, I'd
>jumped to the conclusion that Gaulish romance must have gone the same way,
No - the two-case system (nom. & oblique) survived also in Old Provençal.
IIRC when Andrew first posted mails about Brithenig, one assumption being
made was that the Vulgar Latin of Britain would be similar to that of north
Gaul.  In which case, I think we have to assume the survival of nominative
& oblique in proto-Brithenig.

>if not why ditch the useful -i: plural in Brithenig, given that Welsh etc
>on which B. seems to be modelled kept the equivalent British ending.
I don't know - only Andrew can answer that one.  But one must remember, I
think, that Brithenig - for all its apparent Welshness - is a Romancelang.
I guess that since no Romancelang exhibits umlaut, then the i-umlaut
plurals seemed out of keeping - tho I see no reason why it might not have
developed if Brithenig has such a strong Brittonic substrate influence.

>Unfortunately, we have no record of proto- Welsh, Cornish, Breton at
>the equivalent to the Old French stage, so we don't really know how the
>cases fell together.
True - which is why we can't really use Brittonic as a model on this point;
we have to start from the Vulgar Latin base.

It seems that in Latin (if we discount entirely the already moribund
'vocative' and 'locative' cases), the first casualty was the ablative which
merged with the accusative in spoken Latin before the endof the BC period.
With the fall of final -m, except in monosyllables, the accusative &
ablative singulars became virtually identical.  This then affects the
plural and we find.  We find considerable confusion between acc. & abl.
after prepositions, e.g.
cum libertos, ex donationem, pro salutem, pro hoc ipsud, sine lesionem, a
monazontes, de carnem, contra ipso loco....

Many of these, of course, are merely orthographic in that final -m was
silent and may, indeed, be examples of hypercorrection.

Even in the literary, classical language we find, e.g. hesitation between
_primo_ and _primum_ (= at first); _tertio_ and _tertium_ (= for the third
time).

As early as Plautus, i.e. 2nd cent. BC, we find a tendency for prepositions
to replace genitive & dative constructions; with the increasing phonetic
decay of inflexions, this tendency increased.  So we find, e.g., _ad eum
dicit_ and _ad febricitantes prosunt_ instead of the classical _ei dicit_
and _febricitantibus prosunt_.

_de_ as a substitute for the genitive is found as early as Plautus, e.g.
_dimidium de praeda_.

It seems that in the Vulgar Latin of the Imperial period, nouns &
adjectives had been reduced to a two case system: nom. & oblique.  This was
preserved in the earlierst Romance of Gaul, both north & south - but no
trace of it remained in Italy or the Iberian peninsular, nor - for that
matter - in Romania since the familar two-case system of Romanian is
different and is maintained by the case forms of determinatives, not the
nouns themselves.

The Romanian determinatives and 3rd pers. pronouns generally retained a
case derived in part from the Latin dative (singular) and in part from
genitive (plural) - indeed, the Italian _lui_, _lei_ and _loro_ were almost
certainly establish in late Vulgar Latin and have remained essentially the
same for about onr & half millennia.

[snip]

vowel
>changes that it caused before dropping. The nom. forms won out over the
>oblique cases as eventually happened in French or course.
>
In fact it was the oblique (with very few exceptions) that won out over the
nominative in French & Provençal.
--------------------------------------------------------------------

At 7:51 pm -0500 28/5/01, Eric Christopherson wrote:
>On Sun, May 27, 2001 at 05:49:28PM -0700, Barry Garcia wrote:
>> CONLANG@LISTSERV.BROWN.EDU writes:
>> >Brithenig seems a bit of an odd creature now I look at it more closely. It
>> >has some very un-Welsh features, like the change of /k, g/ to /tS, dZ/
>> >before front vowels.
It is a Romancelang - what I find odd is that it has so many Welsh
features, including purely orthographic conventions like {f} = /v/ which,
personally, I think would be unlikely in a Romancelang.

>> I believe these are more Romance changes. in Italian, c /k/ became /tS/ in
>> front of front vowels, and I think g became /dZ/ in front of them also (i
>> hope i'm right, can anyone correct me if i am incorrect?). Afterall,
>> Brithenig IS a romance language.
>
>Yes indeed. But on the other hand, in Sardinian, neither /k/ nor /g/ went
>through that change. I've always thought it would be kind of nice for
>Brithenig to retain the velar quality also, but I defer to the will of its
>speakers on that subject :)
Yes, but Sardinia received its Latin very early on before /k/ and /g/ began
their process of palatalization before front vowels.  I guess that when
that process started, Sardinia had become a bit of a backwater and remained
unaffected.

As Latin was not brought to Britain till the 1st cent AD, we must allow for
the later changes, and the Vulgar Latin of north Gaul would surely have had
its influence.  Indeed, one could criticise Andrew in that Brithenig
palatalization reflects the more conservative position of Italian, in the
heart of the Empire.

In north Gaul, /k/ before /e/ and /i/ had become [ts], not [tS].  But a
secondary palatalization had taken place before /a/ which was clearly
fronted & pronounced [{]; here Vulgar Latin /ka/ had become [tS{].  Modern
French preserves the old spelling, but the affricate has now become a
simple [S], e.g. cheval <-- caballu(m), chef <-- capu[t], chat <--
cattu(m), chateau <-- castellu(m) etc.

Similar palatalization had taken place with /ga/ which became [dZ{]; but,
languages are rarely nice & symmetrical in their behavior, and VL /ke/ and
/ki/ became [dZe] and [dZi], not *[dze] & *[dz] to match [ts]  :)

But I guess Andrew couldn't bring himself to push palatalization this far.
-----------------------------------
At 2:03 pm +1200 29/5/01, andrew wrote:
>Am 05/28 19:51  Eric Christopherson yscrifef:
>
>> Yes indeed. But on the other hand, in Sardinian, neither /k/ nor /g/ went
>> through that change. I've always thought it would be kind of nice for
>> Brithenig to retain the velar quality also, but I defer to the will of its
>> speakers on that subject :)
>>
>This is the way I feel I should have treated the velar stops, but I
>suspect it is too late to change it now.
FWIW I find it difficult to believe that Britto-Romance would've reversed
the palatalization processes clearly going on in Vulgar Latin of the
Imperial period.

As for changing, I fear such a radical change will put the whole thing back
in the melting pot and all-sorts of other changes will be suggested and
Brithenig will go through a long process of instability.  Possibly, in the
end one might have three or four rival 'Brithenigs' - a bit like the rival
Cornishes which exist today - not IMO a desirable situation.

>I'm going to wander off now until Friday.  See you then.  Keep talking
>about how I can improve my language.
Happy wandering  ;)

Ray.

=========================================
A mind which thinks at its own expense
will always interfere with language.
                   [J.G. Hamann 1760]
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