--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <sean@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> >
> > On second thought, if <Ro:ma> is derived from *reuH- 'to spread out, make room' (as in Lat. <ru:s> 'countryside' from *rewHos 'expanse, spread', Gmc. *ru:maz 'space, room' from *ruH-mo- 'extended, spread out, etc.), it is better to explain the morphology without going outside standard Latin.
> >
> > A plausible parallel is Lat. <po:mum> 'fruit', for which Umb. <Puemune> dat. sg. 'to Pomonus' requires an Italic stem *powemo- 'fruitful'. This can be taken as containing the /o/-grade of the root *peu- 'to propagate one's kind, procreate' whose zero-grade implemental noun *putlo- 'implement of procreation, offspring, son' is reflected as Skt. <putra->, Osc. acc. sg. <puklum>.
> >
> > Formed like *powemo-, Itc. *row(H)emo- 'expansive, broad' would apply to the wide part of a river where fording is feasible, and <Ro:ma> would simply be the fem. sg. of this adjective.
> >
> > Beside <ro:bus> and <abdo:men>, other examples of prelabial -o:- for std. Lat. -u:- are <bo:bus> for <bu:bus> dat./abl. pl. 'to/with cattle' (from *bovibus; the noun has b- from *gW- and is an early borrowing from P-Itc.),
>
>
> But the opp. is seen in octo:br- > octubre Sp. There's also no:dus > nudo , which makes it unlikely that o:P is the start (or only thing that changed). I don't know why o: / u: alt. would be more regular than o / u or e / i in other words.
>
>
> <o:pilio:> for <u:pilio:> 'shepherd' (*ovi-), <po:milio:> 'dwarf' (cited by Donatus) for <pu:milio:>, and <to:fus> 'tufa' for *tu:fus, *tu:fa required by Romance forms (with intervocalic -f-, this cannot be a native inheritance). This assortment, including borrowings also found in std. Latin, indicates that the speech with -o:- should not be considered a separate language as I suggested yesterday, but a mere dialect of Latin. It is unlikely to have had its own army and navy.
> >
Spanish <nudo> 'knot', for expected <nodo> (which does occur as a technical term in medicine and astronomy, obviously a learned borrowing from Latin <no:dus>), can be explained as follows:
1. Classical Latin <de:nu:da:re> 'to strip naked, undress, denude' loses much of its semantic force or becomes metaphorical and is replaced in Hispanic Vulgar Latin by *disnu:da:re. Such a verb could not have been inherited from CL, which would have had *di:nu:da:re.
2. Much clothing is fastened by knots, so *disnu:da:re overlaps semantically with *disno:da:re 'to undo a knot, untie', and the former becomes understood as containing the prefix dis- as a negativizer, not an intensifier of an already negative state (i.e. nudity, the absence of clothing).
3. HVL *disnu:dus 'naked' is back-formed from *disnu:da:re and replaces <nu:dus>, which had lost much of its semantic force.
4. Since HVL *disnu:da:re 'to undress' is felt to be an intensive form of *disno:da:re 'to untie', *annu:da:re 'to knot hard, tie tightly' is formed by analogy beside inherited *anno:da:re 'to knot, tie'.
5. HVL *anno:da:re loses so much semantic force that it becomes unsuitable for everyday use and is replaced by *annu:da:re.
6. HVL *disno:da:re is dropped in favor of the more intensive *disnu:da:re, with context determining whether 'untie' or 'undress' (or both) is meant. This leaves only <no:dus> and the specialized verb *anno:dica:re 'to choke with a knot' with -o:- in this etymological group.
7. HVL *anno:dica:re is replaced by *annu:dica:re through analogy with *annu:da:re. All verbs in this group now contain -u:-, leaving <no:dus> as an oddity.
8. Since <nu:dus> 'naked' had gone out of use, speakers have no difficulty extracting *nu:dus 'knot' from the verbs, and <no:dus> goes out of use.
9. Old Spanish now contains <desnudar> from (1), <desnudo> from (3), <añudar> from (4), <añusgar> from (7), and <nudo> 'knot' from (8). It also has (dialectal) <nuedo> 'knot', whose protoform requires short *-o- and appears to have been contaminated by a Germanic word for 'knot'. This last word goes out of use outside of Asturias, where <nuedu> survives.
10. The Renaissance arrives, and Spanish borrows <nudo> 'nude' from Italian in connection with art. Demure speakers back-form <ñudo> 'knot' from <añudar> to avoid uttering <nudo>, but most speakers have no trouble with the homophony, as context easily distinguishes 'knot' from 'nude'. Scientists borrow <nodo> directly from Latin <no:dus> for technical use.
In steps (1) - (8), citation of words as Hispanic Vulgar Latin is purely formal. The latest steps may have occurred in Old Spanish, and even the earliest ones may have involved the qualitative vowel-system rather than the Latin system which I have marked. This has no bearing on the outcome.
Romance forms of 'October' with -u- are found in Italy as well as Hispano-Romance, and the Liber Glossarum has <Octuber>. This suggests that *Octu:ber was the original, and probably regular, name of the month, with <Octo:ber> resulting in standard Latin and many other dialects from analogy with <octo:>. The reverse is highly unlikely. If <Octo:ber> were original, analogy with <octo:> would prevent the -o:- from changing for any reason.
Regular *Octu:ber also makes sense morphologically. Numerical month-names should be based on ordinals, not cardinals, since it is their order in the year which is specified, not some quantity of items. The old ordinal *octo:vos 'eighth' regularly became Latin <octa:vus>. But if the old month-name *Octo:vobris (with *-br- < *-sr-) first underwent regular connecting-vowel weakening to *Octo:vibris, the *-o:wi- would be expected to contract to *-u:- (as it did in <pru:de:ns> from *pro:vide:ns; the attested <pro:vide:ns> is a later restoration) before *-o:w- could become *-a:w-. This would then yield *Octu:bris, from which *Octu:ber is trivial.
DGK