Re: [tied] Re: Six, -ts- > -ks-

On Fri, 13 Feb 2004 13:08:02 +0000, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>
wrote:

>--- 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?

No of course not. -us was not pronounced -us^, either in France or Spain,
and there were no endings in -us in Spain, unlike in France (-ls > -us), so
the Spanish, not French, use of <x> to stand for /s^/ can only be explained
by the fact that Latin /ks/ developed to /js^/ in Spain (coxa, cuixa), and
not in France, where it developed to /js/ (cuisse, cueissa).

>> 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-> ?

Because there's a thing like a phonological system. As Mitxelena has
shown, the Pre-Basque consonantal system consisted of pairs of lenis ~
fortis sounds, like thus:

(p) t k tz ts N L R
b d g z s n l r

In final position, only the fortis consonant can occur (in practice, only
-tz, -ts, -nn, -ll and -rr), in initial position only the lenis (in
practice, only b-, g-, z-, s-, n-, l-), while in medial position both are
allowed (but -p- is very rare).

As it happens, this Pre-Basque system (reconstructed independently, without
considering the Aquitanian material, on the basis of the Basque dialects
alone and the evidence of Latin loanwords) is in perfect agreement with the
Aquitanian system. Provided, of course, that <x> and <xs> are in fact
spellings for /tz/ and /ts/, which they undoubtedly are.

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