Re: ants was barb

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@> wrote:
> > >
> > > b <-> m is very common in Celtic and Ibero-Romance. How common is it elsewhere?
> >
> > Not very, to my knowledge. I think <hi:bernus> is regular, or at least I have not yet found a counter-example with an original heavy vowel before *-mr-.
>
> Unless, that is, Pg. <inverno> and Sp. <invierno> 'winter' continue an archaic Latin *heimbernum, which was reduced to *heibernum in Roman Latin sometime after 200 BCE, when permanent colonization of the Iberian peninsula by Latin-speakers was established. This would be a peripheral archaism comparable to Pg. <cova> 'hollow of the hand', Sp. <cueva> 'cave' from arch. Lat. *cova, which was replaced by Rom. Lat. <cava>.
>
> Alternatively, this proposed reduction might have followed monophthongization, *hi:mbernum > hi:bernum. Perhaps the process involved nasalization of the long vowel, *-i:mb- > *-i:~b- > -i:b-. Of course, without other examples, such an explanation is by definition ad hoc.

The printed DRAE (18th ed., 1956) cites Sp. <ivierno> as the regular form, and <invierno> as influenced by the prefix in-. Since this form of the prefix belongs to learned words borrowed from Book Latin rather than inherited (e.g. <invitar> against <envidar>, from Lat. <invi:ta:re>), I find this explanation implausible. It seems more likely that <invierno> actually does continue archaic *hi:mbernum, while the less common <ivierno> continues classical <hi:bernum>, introduced to Spain and Portugal by later colonists.

This eliminates the unattractive hypothesis that heavy and light vowels behaved differently before *-mr-. It remains to find other examples. Presumably an ORIGINAL long vowel before *-mr- would have been shortened during the time that Osthoff's Law operated, but diphthongs would have survived.

DGK