Re: [tied] -s -> -i

On Tue, 20 Aug 2002 12:08:21 -0000, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>A nice chance to push my shibboleth theory
>1) General confusion between nom. and acc. pl. in provincial dialects.
>2) East Rome (incl. Italy) opts for generalizing the nom: -i, -e
>3) West Rome therefore opts for generalizing the acc. -s

But there is no "West Rome" here. French, Provençal and Rhaetic (perhaps also
Northern Italian dialects) retained both the nom.pl. (OFr. mur) and acc. pl.
(OFr. murs). On the other hand, Sardinian and Spanish-Portuguese have no trace
of the nom. pl., but I very much doubt this is due to some conscious effort to
not sound Italic.

>4) because of this -i/-s shibboleth East Rome further generalizes -i
>for -s everywhere (eg 2 sg)
>
>Or we might argue Greek and Germanic influence, respectively. In any
>case a development -s -> -i is not phonetically plausible.

Why not? There's nothing implausible about -s > -h > -0 (in polysyllables,
after unaccented vowel), but -s > -h > -ç > -y in monosyllables, after an
accented vowel. The 2sg. -i in Italian and Romanian is in any case not simply
the result of a soundlaw -s > -y (we would expect 2sg. -ai, -ei in the a- and
e:-stems, instead of -i), except in monosyllables (dai < das, stai < stas).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...