Re: Negation

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Richard Wordingham" <richard.wordingham@...>

>> Relatinisation has lengthened _consirer_ to _considérer_ - one extra
>> syllable. Do you concede that _probable_ is borrowed?

> the ending -able is a retro-latinification of a native -avle, -evle
> I've seen old texts with that suffix.

The stem has also been refashioned - inherited prouv- (modern form) to
prob-.

> I think the case of French vis-à-vis Latin very much looks like the

case of

> Hindi versus Sanscrit and Russian versus Slavonic.
> It hardly makes sense to speak of borrowing,
> because those languages have never stop being in written contact

with the

> previous fossilised state of language.
> English has borrowings from Latin
> because it's not a Latin language.

> How do you caracterize a Latin "borrowing" in French ?
> The old dichotomy between mot savant and mot populaire is not so much
> convincing
> because you have plenty of intermediary cases.

The usual identifying mark is that the word could not derive regularly
from its Latin antecedent. This misses some borrowings and a certain
latitude must be allowed for vagaries of development. Sometimes you
can't tell the origin, just as when trying to work out whether English
has borrowed a word from French or from Latin.

>> If _eriter_ is inherited, where does the intervocalic /t/ come from?
>> Ancestral Latin *t would have dropped.

> I don't know,
> I suppose the suffix -ter existed in OF
> and this word may be a recreation ?
> Anyway this word has a kind of lawmaking feature
> that makes it a half written half oral word.

>> As to _proposer_ (did the OF indeed have surd-preserving metathesis?),
>> that would go back to *pro:pausa:re, which did not come from Rome.

> OF is porposer.
> I suppose English purpose may be from that.

Yes, more or less. I didn't check that route. I wasn't sure whether
you had mistyped the Old French word.

The point about *pro:pausa:re is that the word does not regularly
derive from Latin _pro:posa:re_.

The key point is that the longer words in the specimen sentence have
all been subjected to conscious refashioning or borrowing. The words
that have developed fairly regularly or naturally are the shorter words.

Richard.