--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" wrote:
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> [...]
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> But the opp. [to the dialectal lowering of prelabial *-u:- postulated for Lat. _ro:bus_ etc.] 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.
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[This is a reposting of message #70600, which was reduced to nonsense by the angle-bracket sabotage.]
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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 _nuedo_, which 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.
Original *Octu:ber also makes sense morphologically. Month-names should be based on ordinals, not cardinals. The old ordinal *octo:vos 'eighth' regularly became Latin _octa:vus_. But if the old month-name *Octo:vobris (with *-br- from *-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