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

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.



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A mind which thinks at its own expense
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