Re: Six, -ts- > -ks-

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Miguel Carrasquer <mcv@...> wrote:

> On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 15:10:45 +0000, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>
> wrote:
>
> >> >Yes, but why <x>?
> >>
> >> Isn't it obvious?
> >
> >I assume it's obvious to someone with Iberian connections, with
> >Portuguese, Old Spanish, Basque, Old French, Catalan all agreeing

to

> >use <x> for /s^/, but to me it seems that for <x> to be used that
> >way, it must once have stood for what it stood for in Latin,
> >namely /ks/.
> >
> >And let's not forget that the Aquitanian glosses are _before_ that
> >Western Romance tradition of using <x> for /s^/, so you can't

invoke

> >the latter as proof.
>
> I wasn't. The use of <x> for /s^/ is much later, after Latin /ks/

had

> evolved to /(j)s^/ in Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan (not in

Occitan or

> French, however). It has nothing to do with Aquitanian.

It's not that <-us>, pronounced /-us^/ was written was a ligature
that looked like <-x>, tempted people to use <x> to stand for /s^/
also outside of endings? But we discussed this before.

> When the Aquitanians, who wrote only in Latin, needed to write

proper names

> containing their native Aquitanian sibilants /s/, /s'/, /c/, /c'/

(perhaps

> also /s^/, /c^/), the only letters at their disposal were <s> and

<x>.

> There was a tendency to use <x> to write the affricates /c/

and /c'/, but

> there never emerged a consistent transcription system. The problem
> probably solved itself once more and more Aquitanians had adopted

Latin

> names.
>

You're taking for granted that Aquitanian had /c/ here, based on
Basque, presumably. How do you know it for sure it wasn't <-ks-> ?

BTW I noted that Basque has 'expressive palatalisation'; some roots
have alternating roots with palatal and non-palatal initial
consonant. There is a similar phenomenon in Danish, the so-
called 'pejorative j-infix' (ie /y/): fjolle "fool around", pjatte
id., pjalter "rags".

For whatever it's worth.

Torsten