Re: 'dyeus'

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
> > > > ***Rick sez:
> > > > Do these Sabinized <j-> words exist outside of the religious and
> > > > astronical/astrological domain? If not, they could be taboo
> > > > forms based on the rustic forms, which may have been perceived
> > > > by Latin speakers as something akin to Gosh, Crikey, Criminy,
> > > > Laword (Southern pronunciation), etc.
>
> Dayum!
>
> > >
> > > That is possible, but like Torsten's theory of sociolects I think
> > > it complicates matters unnecessarily.
> >
> > The obvious Latin y- > Romance dy- development seems
> > counterintuitive to me, like water running uphill, Standard Swedish
> > pronunciation of written dj- as y-, vs the conservative Finnish
> > Swedish pronunciation dy- fits my intuition. A low sociolect d3- and
> > high sociolect y- of written i- for Latin would take water uphill.
>
> The problem is, we already know there were two groups, Patricians
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patrician_(ancient_Rome)
> and Plebeians
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plebs
> the continued existence of which was guaranteed by political institutions, and that au/o was a shibboleth alloform between the two sociolects, as it was between Proper Latin and Sabine Latin
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claudia_(gens)
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clodius
> It permeated political life of the Roman Republic like race and the Civil War do that of America, and knowledge of either is indispensable for understanding intentional linguistic cross-over references in both those cultures.

Yes, like the hypercorrect <plaudo:>. That the root actually had /o:/ is shown by <explo:do:>. Had the compound originally been *explaudo:, it would have yielded *explu:do:, like <de:fru:do:>.

And we have the anecdote about Hadrian addressing his finicky scribe as Flaurus.

> Note that Clausus and his retainers' acceptance into Rome and the earliest known appearance of Plebeians do not mismatch temporally.

That is a very good point.

Another speculation: could the Sabine Latin spoken by Plebeians be the source of the 'mots populaires' in -a-, as hinted by the -a- of their name? And are the -a-/-a- matches between Latin and Germanic

> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/30032
> actually matches between Sabine/Plebeian and some substrate in Germanic?

If the pre-Sabine substrate was of the "Illyrian type" with /a/ for IE */o/, it might provide a good explanation for SOME of those 'mots populaires'. I do not know whether *sabH- itself (Oscan <Safinim> 'Sabinium', etc.) can be referred to this stratum. What is needed is a set of good etymologies of this sort for a non-trivial number of words.

> BTW, and on the side, no one really knows where this -au/o- is from. If from *-aN-, Claudius, Clausus and Clodius may share a stem with Bastarnian Clondicus
> http://tinyurl.com/37wefec
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/64761

I suspect that <claudus> 'lame' is an inherited IE word, though I have no convincing derivation. It probably has no more to do with Clondicus than with the Klondike.

DGK