From: tgpedersen
Message: 31041
Date: 2004-02-14
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Jim Rader" wrote:French
>
> > I don't think this aspect of Old French historical phonology is
> > especially obscure or controversial. Old French dialects were not
> > unified in terms of phonemic/phonetic distribution [...]
>
> Well, one shouldn't stress the obvious.
>
> > [in a list of features of northern Old French dialects] "Retention
> > of intervocalic z', intervocalic and final s' into Early Old
> > and subsequent shift to z^ and s^ and later x, without development1) Portuguese has /-us^/ for the spelling <-os>.
> > of preceding palatal glide...."
> >
> > Pope cites the spelling <lazsier> in the Eulalia sequence and
> > <moixon>, <tixerant> in the Lorraine Psalter (14th century).
>
> What I do read is "final s' [...] shift to [...] s^ and later x".
> Which does not amount as development of Latin "x" [ks] > [s^] to
> justify the eventual spelling of /s^/ with "x". The text is not
> very coherent: if "s^" can be interpreted only as phoneme, "x"
> can be only a further spelling convention for it (I would hardly
> believe a phonetical [s^] > [ks]). Anyway, even this text supports
> better my claim (and also Miguel's) than yours: it is a certain
> "late phenomenon involving not [ks] > [s^] but only a subdialectal
> [s] > [s^]" if some conditions are fulfilled (the feature is well
> known for anyone having heard "mon p'tit pouchin" :-)). Miguel's
> examples point out that not only Latin <x> but other groups as
> well produce dialectal [s^].
>
> > I'm sure this matter is also discussed in Gossen's _Grammaire de
> > l'ancien picard_, but I don't have it at hand. For a display of
> > modern reflexes of <*laxare> with [s^] and [x] see the entry in
> > Wartburg, _FEW_.
>