[Courrier ind?sirable] Re:[tied] Re: The meaning of life: PIE. *gWiH

> Your statement was:
>
> "Some dimwits use nom. (-i, -ae > -e [actually -i, -e
> --mcv]) in the pl. for all cases, other dimwits use acc.
> (-os, -as)"
>
> I assumed that by "some dimwits" you meant the Easterners,
> and by "other dimwits" the Westerners. The Old French facts
> show that there were no "other dimwits" (acc.pl. -os, as was
> used in Western Romance side by side with nom.pl. -i, -e),
> so there remain no grounds for "shibbolethization" amongst
> the "some dimwits". In fact, the "some dimwits" are just the
> Latin speakers who happened to have dropped final -s (c.q.
> turned it into -i in monosyllables).
>

Correctly assumed. I chose the term since most of these people were
not native Latin speakers and probably learned it without much formal
education. Similarly, I don't expect an immigrants to learn the gender
system of Danish (and with the present development similar to that of
Romem, they probably never will).
I don't know how loud you think they talked in the first millenium,
but surely people couldn't be heard across the Alps? All this is local
interaction. And what your sources record as perfect compliance with
case distinctions until French went the caseless way of its neighbors
(on what day and hour?) covers sociolects with and without compliance,
by necessity.


Torsten