From: Rick McCallister
Message: 56390
Date: 2008-04-01
> At 2:17:32 PM on Tuesday, April 1, 2008,____________________________________________________________________________________
> fournet.arnaud
> wrote:
>
> > From: Rick McCallister
>
> >> I probably confused Tutbury, I did this from
> memory My
> >> point is that if Norman French dropped s- before
> >> consonants in Gmc topos, we should see something
> similar
> >> in N. France
>
> > I suppose it might be more complicated.
> > Dutch-speaking areas in N. France kept s-C.
> > French-speaking areas have e-C
>
> Mostly. I know of at least one case in which the
> prothetic
> vowel is now /a/, and I've found one French
> place-name whose
> history shows /st-/ > /t-/ > /it-/.
>
> Itteville (Yvelines) is <Steovilla> ~795, 850;
> <Theovilla>
> 1175; <Itevilla> 1268; <Ytevilla> ~1290. On the
> basis of
> the early citations Morlet takes this to contain the
> Gmc.
> name <Stadulf>; <Theovilla> then shows loss of /s-/
> (with
> <th> for /t/), though a prothetic vowel was added
> later.
>
> > I suppose the drop of s- in some English topos
> must be a
> > mutual reaction of English and Anglo-normand
> together.
>
> In fact Domesday Book shows both treatments: <Esket,
> Eschet>
> for ON <Skiótr>, <Esmellt, Esmeld> for OE <Smelt>,
> but
> <Calp> for ON <Skálpr>, <Codreschelf> for ON
> <Skoðraskialf>.
> Snellend appears both as <Esnelent> and as
> <Sneleslunt>.
>
> > There's no reason English speakers should adopt
> > Anglo-normand ways if they didn't want to.
>
> They didn't always. For instance, the place
> recorded in DB
> as <Codreschelf> is now <Skutterskelfe> and indeed
> already
> appeared as <Skuðerschelf> in 1176; in this case,
> unlike
> that of Nottingham, the (Anglo-)Norman form was not
> retained. Another example is Sneinton: the OE name
> was
> either <Snotingatu:n>, with the same first element
> as
> <Snotingaha:m>, or <Snotantu:n>, with the genitive
> of a
> masculine name <Snota>, a weak form of <Snot>. The
> name
> appears as:
>
> Notintone 1086
> Notington 1263
> Snotinton(e) 1165-97
> Snottinton 1174
> Sneinton 1194-
> Snai/ynton 1227-1486
> Snointu/on 1233
>
> Ultimately the AN form without <S-> didn't survive,
> but it
> did persist for a while. Conversely, Nottingham
> appears as
> <Snotingham> as late as ~1275.
>
> It appears that both options, adding /e-/ and
> dropping the
> /s/, were available both in England and on the
> Continent; in
> France the /e-/ option became standard, while in
> England the
> /sC-/ combinations usually prevailed. <Nottingham>
> is
> exceptional, perhaps because it was a more important
> town.
> I don't know whether any AN innovations of the
> /esC-/ type
> survived, but I'm not aware of any.
>
> Brian
>
>
>