Re: Basque onddo

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "bmscotttg" <bm.brian@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@>
> wrote:
>
> > And then there's mucho < multus, also regional and other
> > Ibero-Romance muncho and Portuguese muito /mw˜itu/.
> > So, what happened here. Did Spanish get muy from Medieval
> > Astur-Galaico, leaving mucho as the natural development?
>
> According to Penny, <muyt>, later <muy> is the regular outcome of
> MULT(U) with final T, while <mucho> is the regular outcome when
> the T remains syllable-initial.

I've read Penny before, and when Prof. Kuo-Ming Sung told me it looked childish, or something sim., compared to another attempt to reconstruct Sp. in formal notation and regularly according to more modern types, I defended Penny by saying that if a change isn't reg., attempting to form a reg. rule is just foolish. That was in reply to voicing/dropping of t/d, etc.; nasalization; irregularities of palatalization, etc. Now, apparently someone is attempting to use Penny's words to prove regularity over irregularity, which I find ironic.


(I said this before, though I don’t

> believe that I mentioned my specific source.) Penny’s book is
> concerned with the main lines of development leading to the main
> more or less standard modern varieties of present-day Spanish and
> doesn’t deal with other Iberian varieties.
>
> Edwin B. Williams, From Latin to Portuguese, says that the Portuguese
> apocopated form <mui> from <muito> is the result of Spanish influence
> and tentatively attributes the <ui> of <muito> (instead of the *muto
> that would be regularly expected) to the influence of the apocopated
> form. He doesn’t mention <muncho>, but he does note a popular form
> <munto> from <muito>; this seems to have developed by analogy with
> words like bento < BENEDICTU(M) and pente < PECTINE(M),

Unlikely to be analogy; it's irregular nasalization of a palatal after syl.-init. N, such as *ni:dicus > *nidigos > *nidgos > *nidgYos > *niddYos > *niddos\nidYdYos > *ninYdYos > ninho = nest (compare *mutYtYos > muncho, macula > mancha, mattiana > mançana \ maçana OSp;).


in which the

> /y/ of /yt/ became nasalized, a consonantal /n/ developed, and the
> /y/ fell.
>
> Brian
>