Re: Celery

--- In cybalist@..., "Richard Wordingham" wrote:

> Latin 'selinum' and 'petroselinum' are certainly the intermediaries
> for the Catholic / Protestant countries. The Italians have done a
> good job of mangling 'selino'! Standard 'sedano', Lombard
> 'selleri' (whence the French word). And 'prezzemolo' is an
> excellent job of mangling! Are intermediate forms attested?

Devoto-Oli gives another intermediate form for 'prezzemolo', namely
vernacular Latin 'pretosemolum' without * (< Cl.Lat. petroselinum <
Gr. petrosélinon). Nothing for 'sedano'.

> Given the manglings we've seen in Italian, I wonder if there's a
> dialect form like 'zelino'?. In Venetian, perhaps?

Dunno. In Corsican is 'sellaru', 'seddaru'.

>> I suppose Latin /z/ for Dacian /ð/ is plausible.

I doubt about the presence of /ð/ in Dacian. Neither Russu, nor
Poghirc now Wald mention something about it. What examples you have
for it? The same stands for [þ].

> We may need a detailed knowledge of the phonetics of the Greek
> dentals when the Dacian and Thracian words were recorded, and who
> wrote them down. The Greek system was not stable!
> (Note [] for sound, // for phoneme, <> for written form.)
>
> <s> Sigma: [s] (and this is stable!)
> <z> Zeta: [dz] > [z] (I'd appreciate confirmation, as well as
> dates)

The phenomenon might have occured in Dacian/Thracian (see 'zios')
up to some moment (I-st, II-nd century?!). The phenomenon occured
surely in Daco-Romanian, after spliting from southern dialects
(around X-th century a.D.)

> Plausible Dacian and Thracian sounds:
>
> [s], [z], [dz], [dZ], [d], [g^], [ð], [ts], [tS], [Þ], [k^]

As said, I have strong doubts for [ð] and [Þ]. The others seem
to be fine.

> Thracian reportedly shows alternation between tau and theta in
> some words. This sound is identified as /th/. Other words show an
> alternation between delta and tau. This sound is identified as
> /t/.

[...]

> I think [dz] and [dZ] would be recorded as zeta. But is <di> a
> possibility?

Merely a former stage for [dz(i)] (< [di]).

> > IE *dhwer- > Thr. dero, dur 'a stockade' [*dh > d]
> > IE *deiwo- > Thr. desa/disa 'deity, god' [*d > d] but also:
>
> Where does the <s> come from? Duridanov compares it to Greek
> théos 'god', from PIE *dHe:s- (or is it *dHeh1s-?), the source of
> Latin fa:num 'temple'.

The examples were taken from the Thracian glossary available at
http://indoeuro.bizland.com/project/glossary/thra.html

> > IE *deiwo- > Dac. zi(-us, -os) 'god' [*d > z, probably through
> > an intermediate *dz = *ð].
>
> What do you mean by '*dz = *ð'?

Sorry, I was thinking at something else and mixed up with this.
I mean nothing, just skip the part '= *ð'.

>> As said, only /di/ Lat. > /dzi/ > /zi/ Rom. or /de/ > /*die/ >
>> /dze/ > /ze/. Otherwise, /d/.
>
> Romanian dinte 'tooth' < Latin (acc.) dentem? (See
> http://groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/15056 for a brief
> discussion)

OK, I'll give now the precise rule, I mentioned above only some
general cases when /d/ > /z/.

Under stress, /e/ > /Ie/. This evolution has its' timing around
V-th century a.D. [Elise Richter -- "Beitrage zur Geschichte der
Romanismen", Halle, 1934, p. 138...]. The phenomenon does not
occur in some conditions:
- if /e/ is preceeded by /n/ (annelus > inel, neco > înec);
- if /e/ is followed by /n/ (followed by consonant), it becames
progressively an /i/ (bene > bine, dentem > dinte); [*]
- if /e/ is followed by /nn/ and /a/ (/&/) > /Ea/;
- if /e/ is followed by /m/ followed by consonant, it becames
progressively an /i/ (tempus > timp); [**]
- followed by /mn/, it stays /e/ (unless /mn/ is followed by
another /e/, case in which the first /e/ > /Ea/).
The interesting features are [*] and slightly less [**]. They
show that in the case of 'dentem', /d/ was neither followed by /I/
nor by /i/ in hiatus at the right moment: /di/ > /dzi/ only before
dialectal split of Romanian. So the evolution is still regular for
this word.

> > The occasion for /dZ/ (> /Z/): if /d/ is followed by stressed
> > /Io/, /Iu/.
>
> Thank you. I wasn't sure if Romanian exhibited that change. It can
> probably be classed as proto-Romance. The example I had in mind was
> Latin 'diurnus' meaning 'daily', yielding Italian 'giorno'
> meaning 'day'.

It should be: as said, the alteration of [d] seems confirmed by
Latin grammarians from the Vth century a.D..

> > I think this should be a (South-)Slavic feature, maybe some of
> > our list colleagues would enlighten us.
>
> Perhaps they've stopped reading!

Might be...

Regards,
Marius Iacomi