Re: [tied] cuman , slavic or balcanic?

On Sun, 28 Apr 2002 11:36:50 -0500, Paul Alesu <rpales@...>
wrote:

>I just need to emphasize the following:
>
>1. In Romanian the basic form of the suffix is "-esc" not "-escu" like in "calugaresc" from "calugar" (monk).

Of course: -escu in e.g. surnames is I guess simply the form with the
article (-escul, prounounced /-esku/). It's -esc in Catalan too.

>2. To me, it looks and sounds closer to Spanish than Slavic. Like in the popular Spanish surname "Flores" and its Romanian equivalent "Floresc(u)".

No. Spanish has the suffix -esco (e.g. caballeresco). I'm not sure
what the etymology of Flores is (could be < Flórez), but surely not
from *Floresco.

>3. The fact that Romance speaking population lived (very) close to Slavic speaking population for a long time probably just reinforced the use of the IE suffix *-isko in both groups, rather than one group loaning it from another.

That's what I said, except that Latin -iscus does itself not derive
directly from PIE *-iskos, but was mainly borrowed from Greek.

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