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Re: R: Re: Dievas dave dantis; Dievas duos duonos

From:Raymond Brown <ray.brown@...>
Date:Tuesday, September 19, 2000, 21:15
At 3:08 pm +0200 18/9/00, Mangiat wrote:
>Raymond wrote:
[....]
>> written language until the 1st century AD. Writers like Livy & Vergil >used >> 'dentis', tho their texts are very often re-spelled for school kids. The >> spelling 'dentes' is, strictly speaking, post-Classical. > >Two years ago we've translated the 4th book of the Aeneis at school, and the >80% of the plural acc.s was in -is, indeed.
Glad to hear it :) [....]
> >Is the origin of the 'dichotomy' nom. plur. in -es / acc. plur. in -is >caused by the PIE -s/-ns endings?
It's because the Latin 3rd decl. is composed of nouns whose bases (roots) ended in consonants as well those whose bases ended in -i-. The endings -e:s is from -n=s (i.e. syllabic n + s), which gave -as in Greek; but -i:s id from -ins. [...]
>> distinct in the plural, cf. Modern Italian _amici_ /a'mitSi/ <-- amici >> /a'mi:ki:/, but _amiche_ /a'mike/ <-- amicas /a'mi:ka:s/. Latin _amicae_ >> would've given *amice. > >Really?
Really. Both Old French & Old Pronvençal as well as ancient graffiti show that in the popular language _amicas_ was used for both the nominative & accusative; _amicae_ was a literary form only in the late Empire. Final -s seems to have undergone some form of palatalization in Italy (or at least, parts of Italy) in the early Romance period; so, e.g. the 3rd decl. plural -es is now -i in Italian (uomo, uomini), and in Romanian. Infact the "2nd decl" plural -i in modern Italian could have been derived from -os. But Old Old French & Old Pronvençal clearly show that these nouns continued to keep distinct nominative and accusative forms right into the early Romance period; and _amicos_ would have given *amichi, which it doesn't :) Ray. ========================================= A mind which thinks at its own expense will always interfere with language. [J.G. Hamann 1760] =========================================