--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...>
wrote:
>
> --- On Mon, 2/23/09, dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > The form <ausula'> 'to listen to' in the
> > dialects of Rieti and Teramo
> > appears to be a Sabinism, as opposed to <ayosa'>
> > (from *adausa:re vel
> > sim.) in Naples and the Abruzze, which is an Oscanism. I
> > would guess
> > that Sabine used the diminutive *ausula 'ear' (cf.
> > Lat. <o:ric(u)la>)
> > but Oscan retained *ausis, with neither rhotacizing -s-.
>
> So Spanish escuchar, auscultar, Italian ascoltare?
>
Those are from Latin <ausculta:re>; the second Sp. form is obviously
a learned Latinism; the It. form has regular dissimilation of
au...u... to a...u... before the merger of /u/ with /o:/. The Latin
verb is peculiar and probably a Sabinism; the difficulty is that the
2nd element *kwel- is not labialized. I suspect that in Proto-Italic
the zero-grade in a closed syllable *kwl.-to- lost the labial
component and became simply *kl.-to- before the separation into Q-
Italic and P-Italic; there is some parallel evidence from the Umbrian
for 'cake' which I cannot reconstruct without my notes. Old Sabine
*ausi-kolta:- 'to pay attention with one's ears' vel sim. would have
syncopated the connecting vowel; a parallel formation in Latin would
have rhotacized the -s- and would start with *auri-. I suspect that
L. <aestuma:re> is a similar Sabinism originally meaning 'to cut the
bronze' (in payment for something), hence 'to assess the value', here
again a native Latin parallel would start with *aeri-.
DGK