--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:
> alexandru_mg3 wrote:
>
> > So Only a proto-form with á could explain these outputs: Latin
> > praeda > Balkan Latin *pra-a-da > Romanian pradã <-> Alb. pre
>
> Why should it have become Alb. pre (/pre:?) of all things? And whence
> the idea that the word was ever *pra-e-da or *prae-a-da (or anything
> similar) in Latin? It was *prai-heda: (as usually cited) or
> *prai-hoda: (more likely from the point of view of IE
> morphophonology) in the prehistoric ancestor of Latin. By historical
> times it had already produced disyllabic /prae.da/ -- always scanned
> as such in Latin poetry!
>
> There's no Romance evidence for your fantasy either.
Right: see e.g. Michael Weiss' comment "Sometimes the Romance
outcomes point to both /e/ and /E/: praeda > pre:da > preda (Fr.
proie, Sp. prea)/prEda (Ital. prèda, Rom. pradã)", available also
on the web. There is no Romance outcome compatible with a Latin
<*pra(a)da>. Romanian outcome is most probably related to an /E/
having undergone regular evolution combined with influence of the
used verb <prãda(re)>. By no means one could infer some non-Latin
origin of the word (actually related to Lat. <praehendere>) since
we deal with specific Latin evolution.
>> And as I said: we have here the famous 'Second Example' that I
>> always request to Piotr:
>> Lat. aeramen < Balkan Latin (and not only) *a:ramen < Romanian
>> aramã <-> Alb. rem 'copper'
>>
>> So the rule is "assimilation ae<->a => aa<->a" (next a:>a)
>>
>> This indicate us that this are very ancient loans from Latin (in
>> the times when Latin ae didn't pass yet to the Latin e) (but I will
>> come back with an 'exact date' here)
>
> Utter nonsense. The regular development of aerá:m- (with unstressed
> /ae/ and long stressed /a:/!) would have been into *erám-, which
> could undergo assimilation to /arám-/ at _any_ time in its early
> history. The fact that we seem to be dealing with sporadic rather
> than regular assimilation does not indicate _anything_ as regards
> its age.
Actually, one can infer very safely that in this case the shift from
/ae/ to /a/ took place in Latin: practically all Romance words derive
from <ara:men> [REW 242: 1. aeramen "Kupfer", 2. aramen [...]
2. Rum. arama, ital. rame, log. ramine, engad. aram [...], afrz.
arain, nfrz. airain "Erz", prov.,katal. aram, span. arambre, alambre,
portg. arame "Messing"; the same thing is claimed by Rosetti which
indicates also the mechanism (assimilation): "Arama, ca si celelalte
forme romanice (it. rame, log. ramine, engad. aram, v. fr. arain,
prov. aram, port. arame), reproduce un *aramen, cu asimilarea a-a <
ae-a (aeramen)" --> "<arama>, as well as other Romance forms [...]
reproduces an <*aeramen> with assimilation a-a < ae-a" -- I gave the
full quote in order to point out that Rosetti didn't made any claim
about "ae-a > aa-a"].
So: in late Latin already existed the form (attested, according to
"Traité de la formation de la langue", Paris 1890) "aramen". The
alleged mechanism of assimilation is rather clear, and it's of course
a sporadic process, as proven by other similar Latin words which
didn't undergo assimilation (e.g. "aequalis", "aestas", "aetas"...).
Not having a regular evolution in Latin, prevents this word from
being a good example for anything related to the irregularity.
Methinks some people around have difficulties to cope with with
"non-deterministic" processes such as sporadic assimilation, analogy,
or various treatment of stressed vowels, in a complex picture where
some safe rules have still to be preserved.
BTW, there is no AR <flu'er> (a plain nonsense), at most <flùer>
(with stress mark).
Regards,
Marius Iacomi