Re: Alternance a-u in Romanian [...]

From: tolgs001
Message: 35101
Date: 2004-11-12

alexandru_mg3 wrote:

>I have the same impression that the transition could be via an o:
>*Mwa:risia/*Mwarisia > *Mworish(j)a > *Muresh

According to which transformation patterns/rules? Even if
a diphtongation [mwa-] were warranted, I don't get why
(and how) the [a] contained therein turned to [o], ending
up as [u].

OTOH, pay heed to the fact that no native-speaker of the
regions where the river of Mure$ flows and no native-speaker
of the province of Maramure$ utters MureS, but MurãS, i.e.
with the Schwa instead of [e]: ['mu-r&S]. ['mureS] is the
official pronunciation as well as of people living outside
these regions (namely outside the Carpathian range arch).

Further, one has to take into consideration how it sounds
in Hungarian, namely ['mO-roS]. That is, Maros is suffixed
-os [-oS], that corresponds to the Slavic suffix -os^ (-osz).

And: one of the oldes *medieval* toponym related to the
hydronym is (Latinized) Morisena (the stronghold or capital
of the legendary local warlords Glad and Ohtum or Ahtum),
that's now Cenad (Hung. Csanád, remembering the name of
a chieftain that defeated Ohtum: Csanád or, in Latin, Sunad).

I mention this because at this moment I don't remember
whether there had been variants of Marisia with [o] instead
of [a] in the ancient writings (prior to the 2nd-3rd c.).

> marius

George