Re: [tied] Re: sunt & sint

On Tue, 03 Sep 2002 22:37:36 +0200, Georg S t a n a <gs001ns@...> wrote:

>Some scholars have tried to explain it by the Latin subjunctive.
>But I think Lat. sunt > Rum. sânt is quite natural. On top of that,
>in all Romanian texts written with cyrillic characters the word is
>constantly spelled "sãnt". Note that the Romanian cyrillic alphabet
>had 3-4 characters for "î" - but none was used in "sãnt". I don't
>know what highly specialized people in Romania have to say in
>this respect, but I'd dare assume that few centuries ago it might've
>been pronounced /s@.../. This would also warrant the transition
>to /s1nt/.
>
>>For <sînt(u)>, Bourciez suggests influence from Slavic <so~t(U)>
>>"they are", which I guess is possible.
>
>But why should the present the 1st pers. singular, 1st pers. plural
>and 3rd pers. plural be borrowings from Slavic, while the rest
>being Latin? What sense would make such a "split"?

I think what Bourciez suggests is less than a borrowing, merely a change in
vowel shading of inherited <suntu> under the influence of neighbouring sõt(U),
or perhaps already Bulgarian sã(t), sa(t) (written sõ, sa). But if the spelling
in Romanian Cyrillic was indeed with yer, not with yus (õ, e~) or yery (y), that
would tend to speak against such a connection.

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