Re: Weak rules (Common Romance)

--- Grzegorz Jagodzinski <grzegorj2000@...>
wrote:
[snip]

>
> 3. Posttonic nonfinal front vowel (e, i) > a in
> Spanish, like in
> pájaro (passerem), cuévano (cophinum), pámpano
> (pampinum), muérdago
> (mordicum); according to rules, this vowel should
> disappear rather.

According to various historians of the Spanish
language, this -a- and especially -á-C-ago, comes form
substrate. In any case, it does cause a paradigm split
and I imagine it comes from a regionalism that may
have predated the present arrangement of Ibero-Romance
languages.
We'd expect something like *pastro, *cuevro, *pampro
and maybe *muerco. See homine > hombre, femina >
hembra, etc.

>
> 4. A similar weak rule for initial not stressed
> vowel, like in añade
> < enade < *inaddit, balanza < bilancem, trabajo <
> *tripa:lium.
> Naturally, we may speak of assimilation (to the next
> "a") here - but
> it is an irregular phonetic process (or: a weak
> rule: it sometimes
> occurs, sometimes does not) as well.

Could this be from Celtic or Germanic, which tend to
"slight" (i.e. turn to schwa) unstressed vowels?
There is also archaic and regional escuro for oscuro

>
> 5. A weak rule *au > a (instead of regular o) in
> Spanish, like in
> agosto < augustum (dissimilation?) or in Old Spanish
> ascuchar Btw.,
> irregular vowel changes occurred twice in modern
> escuchar < Old
> Spanish ascuchar < auscultat; note that this time
> none of the changes
> were assimilations, dissimilations or changes due to
> frequence.

This has to do with unstressed au- of augustum vs.
stressed au- of oro. The same thing happened in
Italian agostino, ascoltare vs. oro. So it goes back
to Vulgar Latin and doesn't seem to be a
dissimilation.

>

[snip]


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