At 6:42:36 AM on Saturday, December 15, 2007, fournet.arnaud
wrote:
> From: Grzegorz Jagodzinski
>> A.F (old)
>>> Look at French from LAtin, and you will know that
>>> phonetic changes do not care what the structure of the
>>> words is.
>> =====================
> Grzegorz wrote :
>> You are simply wrong.
> =======
> A.F
> Please avoid that kind of statements ad hominem
Speaking briefly as a moderator:
That's a straightforward and perfectly legitimate expression
of disagreement, not an ad hominem.
In the rest of this post I'm speaking simply as a member of
the list.
[...]
>> 5) oie, oiseau, poe^le - all irregular (*a expected on
>> the place of o, cf.. the protoforms: *avicam, *avicellum,
>> patellam), we do not always know why they are such,
> ===========
> A.F
> oie from auca not avica
> auca > old French (before XII century) oue
> then remade as oie because of the word oiseau.
According to M.K. Pope, OFr <oue> and <oie> are doublets
from different dialects. From <auca> /AukA/ the normal
sequence was /AukA/ > /auGa/ > /O&/ > /u&/ <oue> (here /&/
is schwa). In the southeastern, south-central, and
southwestern regions, however, /G/ was palatalized to /j/
between */au/ and */a/, whence <poie> /pOi&/ from <pauca>
and <oie> /Oi&/ from <auca>.
This is actually better for your point.
[...]
>> A very good example of irregular change which depended on
>> the structure is -e:ba:s > old French -eies (-b- lost due
>> to frequence) > -oies > Modern French -ais (ei > ai
>> irregular). In words with another structure e: > oi > ai
>> cannot be observed at all.
Pope follows Grandgent in suggesting that loss of /B/ was
dissimilatory in verbs with labial radicals (e.g.,
<habebam>, <debebam>) and was then extended by analogy to
other verbs: /-eBA(s)/ > /-eA(s)/ > /-ei&(s)/.
> =========
> A.F
> I think your -eies- and -oies- stand for -eis/t- and
> -ois/t-. I doubt these morphemes can have an extra -e-
> before -s-.
Some of the earliest OFr texts have forms like <doceiet> and
<sostendreiet>, where <-eiet> is to be interpreted as
/-ei&þ/. Pope explains the replacement of /-ei&þ/ by /-eit/
(<deveit>, <aveit>, etc.) as being due to the similarity of
the terminations <-eie>, <-eies>, <-eiet> to the sequence of
forms in the present subjunctive of <estre> -- <seie>,
<seies>, <seit>.
The rest is regular: /ei/ > /Oi/ > /wE/ > /E/. The last
step goes back to the late 13th century in the uneducated
speech of Paris and surrounding regions and may have been
reinforced by the influence of western varieties, in which
/ei/ > /E/ quite early. Pope adds that in the 16th century
the pronunciation became more popular in the higher levels
of Parisian society because it was taken up by the court on
account of its resemblance to the Italian pronunciation,
which was then in fashion.
[...]
Brian