"Exu Yangi" wrote:
>The occi- is an ancient root.
>It shows up in Anatolian aki- (to kill), without a trace of >the
strange -g- . Does anyone know the origin of the >final -dere (I assume
originally -dese) ?
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I have no idea why the Romanian reflex of Lat. occi:dere should end up with
a -g-... but no-one has yet ponted out that occi:dere is a compound of ob +
caedere 'to cut'; in the compounded form, the ae diphthong reduces to long
i. There is no root occi-, no inexplicable -dere.
I remember well, in Latin class, the confusion that arose between occidere
(short vowel in all forms, < cadere 'to fall') and occi:dere (long V in all
forms < caedere). From the former -cid- we get _occident(al), deciduous
etc._ , from the latter -ci:d- such words as _decide, incise, incision et
al._.
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A further comment, if I may, on the "Is there a diphthong or not in Rom.
tri(i)?" discussion-- As Piotr pointed out, even English speakers are
unaware that our tense vowels are generally analyzable as diphthongs. One
can demonstrate to the average native speaker that /ej/ (or /e:/ in another
system of phonemicization) and /ow/ (or /o:/) are in fact diphthongs simply
by drawling them-- the offglides become readily apparent. Perhaps /ij/ and
/uw/ are another matter, but can be demonstrated instrumentally.
The average native speaker of English (even educated ones) will be
flabbergasted, annoyed and probably argumentative when a linguist points
out, for example, that the "p" in pit is not _phonetically_ the same as the
"p" in spit; or that what we learned in school as "long i" is in fact
another diphthong starting on [a] and ending on [j], or that our beloved
"long a" is in fact the /ej/ diphthong. Sadly, phonetic analysis and
terminology are not part of most US grade- or high-school curricula (if they
were, perhaps there'd be more jobs available for linguists.....)
Certainly it would be presumtuous for a linguist to _correct_ a
foreign-language speaker's pronunciation of his own language, but it is
perfectly in order for the linguist to point out _how_ the speaker is
pronouncing things, even if said speaker is unaware of what he's doing (and
no reason why he should be aware). Sometimes a linguist _does_ know more
about a language. :-))
<return to lurking mode>