--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...>
wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> Sardinian has 5 vowels and retroflex /D.D./. Both
> Sardinian and Sicilian may share a similar IE
> substrate that is somehow related to or part of Italic
> --the Sicels/Sikeloi/Siculi and both have non-IE
> substrate and who knows if those are related.
> I don't was to put my foot in my mouth any farther, so
> maybe you can pick up the ball and run with it
>
With my present knowledge, I'd probably be tackled for a big loss.
I've been planning to read Wagner's trilogy (La lingua sarda,
Historische Lautlehre des Sardischen, Studien zum sardischen
Wortschatz) for years, and other matters keep pushing Wagner to the
back burner. Likewise, I haven't read Schmoll's book on the pre-
Greek languages of Sicily, only some scattered recent material.
What's clear even without special knowledge is that the division
between Sardo-Sicilian and Continental Western Romance is deep and
old. Not only does S-S have the 5-vowel system and the retroflex, it
merges the Latin 3rd conjugation into the 2nd, and it uses the reflex
of L. <habeo:> as a _preposed_ future auxiliary. In CWR, of course,
the auxiliary was _postposed_, leading to cliticism and fusion. This
indicates that Sardo-Sicilian Latin had already adopted SVO as the
neutral word-order when it normalized <habeo:> as the future
auxiliary, while the Latin which became CWR was still SOV.
I'm inclined to try to find out what the conventional wisdom is on
this matter among Romanists, before I choke on my own foot.
DGK