Re: USAGE: Romance Diphthongisation

On Tuesday, September 28, 2004, at 06:06 , Roger Mills wrote:

> Joe wrote:
>> So, as I soldier on on Latinesque, I need help.  Where did
>> Diphthonisation occur in the Romance languages, when, and how?
>>
>>  I'm trying to research the history of the language deeply before
>> looking at the surface, so  I can describe it accurately, you see.
>>
> Depends on a number of factors-- (1) the area-- whether it's an Eastern
> (Romanian and IIRC Italian and some small relatives) or Western
> (Franco-Provencal/Iberian). (2) whether the VL vowel system goes to 5
> /ieauo/ (maybe with length),
I think that's attested only in Sardinia.

> or 7 /ieEauoO/ (or more, like French, but it's
> another matter).
That's certainly the common western proto-Romance.

> But almost everywhere, IIRC, VL stressed short e and o diphthongize--
That would also have included the Classical diphthong _ae_ which became
pronounce /E/ just stressed short e did.

> Span.
> "ie", "ue" in every environment, Ital. "ie" "uo" in open syllables but /E
> O/
> in closed, and with exceptions of course. Romanian has "ea" and "oa" _I
> think_ for these vowels, but I'm not sure.
Yes, Romanian does. It seem that the proto-Romance pronunciation was [wO]
and [jE] in unblocked syllables. [jE] remained, but [wO] became [w9] in
Gaul and [we] in Iberia. The other difference was that some areas, e.g.
Iberia, the diphthongized pronunciation was used in blocked stressed
syllables also. (Later, in Portuguese, the diphthongs were
're-monophthongized'!)

This seems to be the extent of common proto-Romance dipthongization. The
Classical /au/ BTW appears to have remained in proto-Romance. Where it has
subsequently monophthongized seem to be independent developments.

>
> OTOH it might be interesting instead to have the _long_ vowels
> diphthongize,
> which strikes me as a more natural thing to happen. (More Germanic too)
Well, stressed long o and long e did diphthongize in Gaul, becoming
originally [ow] and [ej] respectively. eventually in Old French they
became [2w] and [oj]. Indeed, if you really want a lot of diphthongization,
  the Gallic Romance is the model; but it's not typical of the others.

> You should hunt up one of the books on the Romance languages; I use W. D.
> Elcock's, but there are more recent ones; and I think someone on the List
> has cited an on-line source
I'm sure there must be on-line stuff.

Ray
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