From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 16673
Date: 2002-11-10
----- Original Message -----
From: Piotr Gasiorowski
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Sent: Sunday, November 10, 2002 2:22 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Vocative case in Romance
> Since Lat. deus < *de.wos < *deiwos, I'd expect the _inherited_ vocative to have been *<di:ve> (< *de.:we < *deiwe), because *w did not normally drop before front vowels; thus e.g. gen.sg. <dei:> is analogical for *<di:wi:>. There seems to have been little use for the voc.sg. before Christianity; as for the early ecclesiastical writers, Tertullian used disyllabic <dee>, which was clearly analogical.
I should add that <di:ve> is attested as the voc. of <di:vus>, which was originally synonymous with <deus> and comes from the same source: the Pre-Latin paragigm of *deiwos/*deiwi: split into <deus/dei:> and <di:vus/di:vi:> rather than end up as phonetically regular but morphologically aberrant <deus/di:vi:>.
Piotr