Re: New Conlang: Þrjótran

R A Brown skrev:
> Andreas Johansson wrote:
>
>> Quoting Benct Philip Jonsson <bpj@...>:
>>
>>
>>> R A Brown skrev:
>>>
>>>> Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>> R A Brown skrev:
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> [snip]
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>>> AE  became monophthongized in unaccented syllables in Republican
>>>>>> times, i.e. during the 1st cent BCE. It spread to accented syllables
>>>>>> during the 1st cent CE.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The change was to [E]. i.e. as Philip says, it merged with short e.
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>>
>>>>> But strangely Germanic borrowed CAESAR as *kaisar, cf.
>>>>> German Kaiser and Old English cásere, where á /A:/ < *ai.
>>>>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> The retention of initial /k/ does strongly suggest that these are
>>>> learned borrowings, or remodelings. We could also expect a "posh"
>>>> learned pronunciation of this name/title to be used which was
>>>> archaic by
>>>> normal spoken standards. The initial sound of Russian Tsar' shows a
>>>> derivation from spoken form (I am not competent to comment whether
>>>> Russian -ar' would reflect /Eri/ or not).
>
>
>
> OOOPSS!! The Russian -ar' has nothing to do with the change of AE to a
> monophthong - it is derived from (Vulgar) Latin -are(m). Tsar' must be
> from some form like /tse'sare/.
>
> The German form is also odd in showing the reduction of either Classical
> Latin /a:r/ or vulgar Latin stressed /ar(e)/ to unstressed [@(r)]. It
> has all the appearance of a semi-learned borrowing from the Classical
> Nominative (3rd decl. nominatives were normally remodeled on the basis
> of the acc. in Vulgar Latin - a similar thing has happened in Greek) -
> but see below.
Not necessarily.  Germanic had, with the exception of a small
closed set of prefixes, regular word-initial stress. Germanic
speakers may well have turned [kai'sarem] into ['kaisarem].

>>> It may be between six or seven centuries between the borrowing
>>> of CAESAR into Germanic and into Slavic.  Moreover the Slavic
>>> form -- I can alas not check right now what the form was in
>>> Old Church Slavic -- may have been borrowed by way of Greek
>>> rather than directly from Latin.
>
>
> Umm - the Greek acc. /ke'sara/ - this would imply a nom. /kesaras/, but
> I suspect the learned /'kesar/ was normal. However, that would surely
> give a Slav form with initial /k/; also it does not account for the
> palatalization of the final /r/. The Russian must surely be derived from
> some form such as /tse'sare(m)/.

The final palatalization -- historically a final short /i_X/
-- does imply a source word with a final front vowel,
however Slavic at this time could not have a [ke] sequence;
either the [k] would automatically be subjected to the
Slavic second palatalization, becoming [ts], as we see in
numerous loanwords from this period, or possibly the [e]
vowel would change into something that tolerated a preceding
[k], although the latter is not likely.  It is interesting
that the Slavic form has initial /ts/ and not /tS/, since
after the first palatalization [k] > [tS] had ceased to be
operative loan-words with velars before front vowels were
all subject to the second palatalization [k] > [ts]; [k] >
[tS] simply could not happen any more as an intra-Slavic
process, but I guess that if a Romance loan-word had been
already pronounced with [tS] in the source language it would
have been borrowed with /tS/, yet the vast bulk of Latin
(and Greek) loans show second palatalization [k] > [ts],
which implies borrowing from a form of Romance which hadn't
undergone [k] > [tS]! Unfortunately we don't know how
advanced palatalization was in Balkan Romance around 500
C.E., but the Slavic evidence says "not very".  As for first
palatalization [k] > [tS] in Slavic it was so early that
only early Germanic loans are subject to it -- but no
Latin/Romance or Greek loans AFAIK.

Alas I still can't check if the OCS form is /tsi_Xsari_X/,
but I bet it is.  Yitzik, are you here, and do you happen
to have Vassmer at hand? :-)

>>> But what if Germanic *kaisar was borrowed even in the lifetime
>>> of C. Iulius Caesar, would it need to be learned or posh all
>>> the same?
>
>
> See below:
>
>> If AE > [E] in stressed syllables only in the 1st C AD, a loan in the
>> very early
>> Imperial period, say during Augustus's Germanic wars, would explain the
>> diphthong of *kaisar too, or or am I missing something?
>
>
> Certainly if it were borrowed during C. Iulius Caesar's lifetime, we are
> still in the 1st cent BCE. The nominative would still have retained the
> diphthong (tho in the oblique case, it would be unstressed and tending
> towards [E:]). If the Germanic borrowing was as early as this, it would
> certainly explain the retention of the diphthong. Also some of the Latin
> borrowing in Old English were, we know, brought to this country by the
> Saxon invaders/settlers and were early borrowings, retaining features
> which had disappeared from spoken Latin well before the Saxons came to
> Britain, cf. wall <-- uallu(m).
>
I think we can safely assume that cásere belonged to this group.
I think all Germanic languages (where it is attested at all)
point to an early loan *kaisari.

--
/BP 8^)>
--
Benct Philip Jonsson -- melroch at melroch dot se

    "Maybe" is a strange word.  When mum or dad says it
    it means "yes", but when my big brothers say it it
    means "no"!

                            (Philip Jonsson jr, age 7)

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