Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "alex_lycos" <altamix@...>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Thursday, January 09, 2003 8:27 PM
> Subject: Re: [tied] Old English "a-spylian"
>
>
> Of course there is no rhotacism in late _loans_ from Latin (examples
> could be quoted by the hundred) and in other words of late origin.
I dont know why I have the strange feeling you think I dont make the
difference between the so called "inherited" word and the late loans
from latin.
Although I have no historical grammar of Romanian to hand (Miguel or
> George may comment on the details), the rhotacism of intervocalic /l/
> was regular in the inherited vocabulary (<sare> 'salt', <miere>
> 'honey', <soare> 'sun', <pãdure> 'forest', ect.). My impression is
> that Latin /ll/ was never affected and that its degemination must
> therefore have been later than rhotacism, cf. pellis > piele 'skin'
> or mollis > moale 'soft' (as opposed to mola > moarã 'mill'). What
> problems have you got with this? What mysteries do you see here?
There are the problems with the words where we do not have this
rhotacism. And I guess that when a phenomena occurs, then this phenomena
doesn't make a difference like" here is a Latin word, I will rhotacise
the intervocalic "l", here is not a Latin word, so I wont do that".
Normally a such phenomena should affect all the words no matter where
they come from in the time this phenomena works.This is why I see a
little mystery here. On another hand, words like "sare", "soare" can
very well derive directly from PIE and not from Latin like "mare"= great
which is not from Latin "maris"= sea.
Now you have strange things like Latin "aureolus" >aurum which gave a
romanian "alior", Latin "serenus" > Rom. "senin" and so on.
The semantic changes in fact are the most important in my eyes.
"alerga"= to run from Latin "allargare ( < largus),
alinta= to caress from Latin *allentare (<lentus), alunga= to banish
from Latin *allongare (< longus) and so on, examples are too much to
quote them.
Even the "padule"= mud, mire you quote as giving Romanian "pãdure"=
forest and in albanian "pyll"= forest too.
Famiglia= family > rom. "femeie"= woman , and so on. These are
semantically changes which in a small number normally have to be
accepted, but when they are in the very great number, they become too a
bit, misterious for the short time from Latin time to today.
>
>> 2) *expanticare> spinteca, *expendiolare > spînzura, *expavorere >
>> speria, *supercina > sprânceanã, *spudia > spuza, etc. I can give
>> you here more "examples". Do you observe something? Of course you
>> do. They are all reconstructed words, but not from PIE , from Latin,
>> from a language we know a lot. About these Romanian examples I will
>> speak later. Just keep in mind now these reconstruction
>
>
> So what? Vulgar Latin was extremely rich in such non-classical
> prefixed verbs. There are cognates for many of them in other Romance
> languages, e.g. <spinteca> correcponds to North It. spindegar (same
> meaning).
There is not so easy an "so what". I mean, if we take as shield an
expression like "so what" we can conclude anything regarding the vulgar
Latin. Don't you mind there must be a correlation , a path between
literary Latin and vulgar Latin? If not, we can conclude for example
that Slavic "byty" is a vulgar latin from "bito" because anyway, the
semantism doesn't play a clue here and for phonology we can make rules..
So what if in Latin "bito" = to go, Slavic changed it in " to be" where
is the problem? This is what disturb me so much . I don't like the big
amount of semantic changes from Latin to Romanian as I don't like to
phonological changes icomparing with words from "substratum" which have
a form very appropriate to the PIE roots.
But these are just my toughs. In the moment when there is a set of rules
to show anything else as Latin evolution we can talk about., Right now,
there is a set of rules which show a Latin evolution and from my side
just a big amount of words who laugh about these rules. At this level I
can just tell you about these words , but not moreL