From: dgkilday57
Message: 70111
Date: 2012-10-04
>When vowel-harmony trumps simple weakening, as with <adagium> against <pro:digium>, <alacer> against <alipe:s>, <monumentum> against <regimentum>, etc., we are dealing with phonetic complexity, not "optional changes". Doublets like the less common <monimentum> due to analogy are easily understood. I reject the connection of <e:legans> with <lego:>, which makes no morphological sense. I think <e:legans> means 'lying out' (i.e. 'outstanding') and involves a different root, which is attested in Faliscan.
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@> wrote:
> > >
> > > I seem to remember reading that elementum was from Greek via Etruscan. Is that true?
> >
> > It is true that you read that (possibly in Palmer), but the etymology is silly. Supposedly, Greek <elephanta> nt. pl. 'ivory (letters)' was borrowed into Etruscan, then corrupted into <elementa> in Latin. This is allegedly justified by Praenestine Etruscan <Melerpanta> 'Bellerophon', an extreme case of "obscurum per obscurius", since we do not know the route by which this name, lacking an etymology in the first place, reached the Etruscans of Praeneste.
> >
> > Another bad etymology (but agreeing with Sean's opt. sdl. methodology) regards <elementum> as a form of <alimentum>.
>
> There's also elicio but elecebra (e:-e-e), and elegans or eligans (that probably (one ex. of) analogy). Opt. changes and doublets aren't forbidden by some Neogrammarian stranglehold.
> > The most plausible view is that Roman schoolboys used *elemena 'the LMN's' as we use 'the ABC's', with all syllables but the last accented, since the letter-names were <el>, <em>, <en>.It is not a "random internal set", but the very heart of the alphabet, and these medial letter-names have comparable phonetic shapes, unlike the initial set <a>, <be>, <ce>. I am not saying that a nt. pl. like *abecea or *abecedea was never used, but *elemena (later <elementa>) was more phonetically elegant, hence more popular, and it won the day.
>
> There's no reason to think that the one meaning = ABC's was original (actually the opp.), and very unlikely that a random internal set (instead of the first 2-3, as usual) would ever have been so used for the whole.