English Language & Usage: Multi-Layered Discourse Room

Tonepoet

01:40

@JasonBourne Guess what I saw in a used bookstore today.

Leaky Nun

02:24

@Cerberus yes, in the second -do above also.

@Cerberus have you studied reduplication in Latin? It's an interesting topic.

tchrist

02:44

> "I have in front of me, oh, about eight or 10 different newspapers," FDR said in that February 1939 press conference.

What's troubling about that sentence?

> But Truman and Eisenhower were from a different generation as Kennedy.

Or that one?

Leaky Nun

@tchrist is there any remnant of reduplication in Romance languages that you know of?

tchrist

I presume the rooster’s ki-kirikí doesn't count. :)

Only conventional transcriptions of animal sounds come quickly to mind.

And those aren't grammatical.

So don't count.

The English penchant for creating namby-pamby compounds at the drop of a hat does not seem to occur there, at least with such widespread inventiveness.

Leaky Nun

I'm not talking about those

tchrist

I've had Romance speakers mention these.

Leaky Nun

I'm talking about reduplication in Latin

sto (stare, steti, statum) was a reduplicative verb, e.g.

tchrist

02:54

You mean things like repeating bits of a word to mean some aspect.

Leaky Nun

well that's one use of reduplication

you'll only see it in the second stem

tchrist

quisquis

Lots of those.

Leaky Nun

but they didn't get inherited to Spanish

tchrist

I can't think of any.

And I probably would know.

Leaky Nun

well maybe there's a question you'd know more about: how did the past tense of "estar" become "estuve"? Is this corrupted by tuve?

and even so, how did tuve get there?

tchrist

02:57

There's some PIE-inherited theme of /i/ or /u/ in the strong preterites, inherited from Latin.

Leaky Nun

but the Latin was tenui for tuve and steti for estuve

with a long i

tchrist

Portuguese has tive there, not tuve.

Leaky Nun

interesting

so the u is from v?

this still wouldn't explain the disappearance of n though

tchrist

Well.

Leaky Nun

and I assume you've completely switched to tuve, ignoring estuve.

tchrist

02:59

I'm thinking they modelled it after something else, yes.

I don't know.

Leaky Nun

which verb are you talking about?

tchrist

I'm thinking about strong preterites.

Leaky Nun

estuve or tuve?

tchrist

Things that are NOT stressed at the end.

Like both of those.

Or supe etc.

Leaky Nun

... que supo seguir ...

tchrist

03:01

hubo

Leaky Nun

supe < sapui ...

tchrist

hice, fiz

Leaky Nun

habuit > hubo

tchrist

From feci.

Leaky Nun

right, that's regular

tchrist

03:02

pude, puse

quise

vine

Leaky Nun

potui > pude

quaesevi > quise

veni > vine is regular

tchrist

dije

Leaky Nun

dixi > dije is regular

tchrist

And of course, fui.

pide

Leaky Nun

which fui?

tchrist

03:04

Both of them! :)

Suppletion is so weird.

Leaky Nun

they're from the same root though, methinks

tchrist

All the -ucir verbs going to -uje.

Leaky Nun

well they might also have descended from fugio (fugi)

we also have sum (fui)

@tchrist for example?

tchrist

conduje, produje

Leaky Nun

petivi > pide

@tchrist this is regular

it's -uxi- in Latin

tchrist

03:06

> The infinitive and forms beginning with i or y are from Latin īre, present active infinitive of eō (from Proto-Italic *eō, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁ey-); the forms beginning with v from corresponding forms of vādō; the forms beginning with f probably from forms of sum or fugio.

Leaky Nun

@tchrist yes, I was referring to this

tchrist

anduve

Leaky Nun

sum (fui) or fugio (fugi)

tchrist

right

Leaky Nun

but conduje and produje are obviously borrowed

tchrist

03:07

I thought you meant the fui of ser or the fui of ir.

Leaky Nun

@tchrist well I also meant that

now have we cited enough examples?

May we go back to the mechanism?

tchrist

The stressed vowel in the not-stressed-at-the-end preterite is always /u/ or /i/.

Leaky Nun

also, the -uve forms might be influenced by the -uvisti forms, having a different stress

that might give us tenuisti > tuisti > tuvisti

tchrist

So, here's the thing.

That ES tuve versus PT tive thing, I mentioned: it's the same with estuve / estive.

Leaky Nun

sure

I don't think steti is ever inherited to Spanish/Portuguese

they might have completely remodeled it based on the first stem

stare > *stavi, displacing Classical Latin steti

my hypothesis.

tchrist

03:11

I'm almost certain Galician is exactly like regular Portuguese here. I'd have to look up Catalan though because that's from a different group.

Leaky Nun

estiguí in Catalan

but I haven't studied much about the evolution of Catalan

tchrist

Ahah!

Word-final stress, like normal preterites.

Leaky Nun

there's a -g- there

which also appears in the strange 1.sg.pres estic

tchrist

Catalan has funny things.

Sometimes digging through Old French or Italian helps see the similarities, but sometimes not.

Leaky Nun

Old French has estui

tchrist

03:14

(with Catalan)

Leaky Nun

jinx

tchrist

Ahah.

Again.

Leaky Nun

stetti for Italian

tchrist

Are you trying to figure out where the -v- came from?

Leaky Nun

well, less the -v-, more the -u-, but they're related.

wait, stetti for Italian must have directly inherited steti in Latin

so Italian hasn't gone through the regularization

tchrist

03:16

Just a sec, I'm reading paper copy for possibilities.

Leaky Nun

alright

the -g- in Catalan is also interesting

it only appears in 1.sg.pres and the preterite

tchrist

For morphology they do group fui/estuve/hube/tuve/fui [sic, 2x] as a cluster, but I'm not seeing more than that in a quick skim.

Leaky Nun

what is the sic for and what does 2x mean?

tchrist

In contrast, they do show lots of things like ruptum > roto, factum > hecho.

Leaky Nun

factum > hecho is regular

tchrist

03:19

@LeakyNun fui for both ir and ser

Leaky Nun

@tchrist alright

ruptum > roto isn't unexpected

tchrist

rightdam

The you have about 20 pairs where you have the old participle co-extant with a more regular one: torcido and tuerto both for torcer.

Leaky Nun

it still amazes me that the reason French faites has kept the "t" and "s" instead of changing it to "z" like other verbs is because the stress is on the "a"

tchrist

Where the irregular does has come to have a differentish meaning.

@LeakyNun thinks

Leaky Nun

@tchrist that's for another discussion though

tchrist

03:21

faites should have been extremely common, and prone to being worn down, so I understand your amazement.

Leaky Nun

@tchrist I mean, the other verbs have -ez because the stress was on "e" in "-etis"

it's closer to the stress

I thought things closer to the stress should get preserved more

but it's being far away from the stress that preserved it

fAcites > fAItes
habEtis > *avEts > avEz

the difference might also be due to the different vowel, though

@tchrist alright, what's next?

tchrist

Let me check one other place.

> "There is a nucleus of irregular verbs resisting easy incorporation into any conjugation; ser "to be" ir "to go", which incorporate forms from more than one Vulgar Latin verb, and ter "to have" vir "to come" pôr to put, which incorporate nasal root vowels with a variety of realizations.

Not helping.

> These verbs, together with dar and estar, the only first conjugation irregular verbs, also form a cohesive group with many analogical links....

Right, why is it doy/voy/estoy/soy in ES, dou/vou/estou/sou in PT.

Leaky Nun

I tend to think sum > sui > soy, but that wouldn't explain sou in PT so let's discard this hypothesis.

tchrist

There's clearly a pattern here, but not a clear pattern. :)

Leaky Nun

not to mention eres < eris, future [forgot what mood]

tchrist

03:30

Those are both indicative.

Leaky Nun

I see

what is in common is that the oy/ou are both from the stressed long o

assuming regularization of sum > so

are there other stressed long o in Latin? @tchrist

tchrist

BTW, Portuguese has tu és like French has tu es.

Leaky Nun

sure

tchrist

@LeakyNun In final position?

Leaky Nun

@tchrist yes

tchrist

03:35

I can only think of the Italian 1s future, like saprò for sapere, but that follows from the way they synthesized a new future from an inflection of what had been habere.

Leaky Nun

right

tchrist

I can't think of a stressed "word final long o" in Latin.

Leaky Nun

well, essentially, monosyllabic verbs.

tchrist

Right, not counting one-syllable ones.

Leaky Nun

Like do, *vo, sto

tchrist

03:36

Sure.

Leaky Nun

Are there any other monosyllabic verbs?

tchrist

Wait, not vo, vado.

Leaky Nun

sure

tchrist

doy, voy, soy are all I can think of remnants of, so if there had been one, it didn't last?

Leaky Nun

hmm

tchrist

03:39

The diphthonging of the -o at the end to oy/ou into a semi-consonant glide that doesn't increase syllable count is a bit odd, but the PT 3s preterite has stressed -ou there. That might tell us why.

falou < falar

Like habló, but with a nominal diphthong heard today almost only in the north.

Leaky Nun

is falou stressed in the ou?

tchrist

Yes.

Portuguese has different stress rules.

Leaky Nun

sure

and falei?

tchrist

sure

They do this in the future, too.

Compare hablaré with falarei.

But there you always hear it.

Leaky Nun

-ou and -oy might be from different mechanism

tchrist

03:43

On the ou diphthong, you usually do not.

Leaky Nun

do you palatalize d in dizer?

tchrist

Me? No.

Leaky Nun

wait, my focus was on estuve/tuve, lol

tchrist

Brazilians do.

Portuguese do not.

Leaky Nun

I see

tchrist

03:46

Brazilian dice sounds like jici.

Portuguese dice sounds like dice. :)

Leaky Nun

lol

tchrist

So, your forehead is frente, as in Spanish.

That's "frenchy" in Brazilian, just "frent" with a silent e in Portuguese.

Leaky Nun

alright

tchrist

All the -ity nouns from English that are -dad nouns in Spanish are -dade in Portuguese. The Portuguese have a silent e at the end so it sounds just like Spanish; the Brazilians say -aji

In contrast, most Brazilians don't palatalize -s in the syllable coda like they do in Portugal. Some do, though.

Leaky Nun

> *stavi > estuve
tenui > tuve
sapui > supe
habui > hube
feci > hice
potui > pude
posui > puse
quaesevi > quise
veni > vine
dixi > dije
fu(g)i > fui
petivi > pide
conduxi > conduje
*ambitavi > anduve

Now what conclusion should we draw?

tchrist

03:50

It's a mix of things.

There looks to be a bit of metathesis.

Leaky Nun

metathesis?

tchrist

The u in sapui switching places with the p.

Leaky Nun

I don't think it's that simple

the /u/ might be from the /b/

tchrist

So, even during the Empire there was b/v "confusion" in Latin speakers from Hispania, or so it is said.

Leaky Nun

indeed.

tchrist

03:54

Stubborn lot.

2000 years later and they still haven't fixed it.

Leaky Nun

b/v merged in stressed position and were dropped in unstressed position

tchrist

You lost -d- often enough.

Leaky Nun

now how is that helpful?

tchrist

potui has t>d which is normal.

Leaky Nun

I agree.

do they call this the first lenition?

tchrist

03:56

It is.

Do that to a d and it's gone.

Leaky Nun

alright, what next?

tchrist

The u in potui was short; the i was long because it was preterite, and they liked keeping long vowels.

Leaky Nun

agreed.

tchrist

So the u was "weak".

Leaky Nun

but it might labialize the stop

tchrist

03:58

I wonder if some of these weren't formed via analogy with others. But we already said that.

Leaky Nun

let's disregard analogy for now

right!

it must have come from labialization of the stop

the /u/

tchrist

Portuguese has lots of "extreme lenitions" like French has, as in vitam > FR vi, so luna > PT lua, GAL lúa. But I don't think the /u/ there was part of that last one.

Leaky Nun

what did you mean by the last statement?

it's well-known though, that in PT we have V -> +nasal / _nV

tchrist

I don't think the n in luna disappeared under influence of the neighboring vowels being u and a; I think intervocalic -n- was just weak there.

@LeakyNun Certainly.

Leaky Nun

@tchrist so do you think luna > lua is a instance of that rule?

tchrist

04:04

(The only way I know all the "irregular" -ão plurals is by translating to Spanish or Latin. I don't know how native speakers do it.)

Leaky Nun

Latin lūna > Old Portuguese lũa > Portuguese lua

tchrist

No, I THINK intervocalic -n- and -l- were simply effaced irrespective of which vowel it was.

Leaky Nun

in PT or in GL?

tchrist

PT/GL both; same language a few hundred years ago. But note malum > mao > mau versus manus > mão

Leaky Nun

did you say a few hundred years? :o

tchrist

04:07

Yes.

Some people think they're still the same language, which is a bit political.

Leaky Nun

that's.... way sooner than I thought

anyway, let's go back to the -uCe problem

tchrist

If you read the "Galician" poetry of Alfonso X, it really is no different from the Portuguese at the time; they were the same at that point.

Leaky Nun

alright

tchrist

-uCe

These can't have gotten anything from steti to estuve.

Or estive, whatever.

Leaky Nun

My hypothesis is now sapui > saβʷé (French/Italian orthography for open e) > suβʷe > supe

@tchrist well, as I said, it must have been a regularization

tchrist

04:13

I would say that è is open e in French and that é is close e, no? An é is open e in Portuguese BTW; close e is ê there. So FR é = PT ê, FR è, ê = PT é.

whines

Leaky Nun

French é is /e/ FWIW

tchrist

Right, that's the one I meant for close.

Leaky Nun

it's a open vowel

tchrist

How?

/ɛ/ is open, /e/ is close, surely?

Leaky Nun

wait, nothing

it's too confusing

tchrist

04:15

heh

Which is why Spanish is so much easier with 5 vowels than everybody else with 7 or worse.

Leaky Nun

sure

> Old French: estui/estai
Catalan: estiguí
Galician: estiven
Portuguese: estive
Spanish: estuve
Italian: stetti
Asturian: tuvi/tevi

tchrist

So there's agreement once you leave Italy. :)

Leaky Nun

As I said, Italian is from steti without remodeling

and Italian is not Western Romance

tchrist

I don't think of it that way.

Romanian is Eastern Romance.

Leaky Nun

Asturian has decided to eff the s

tchrist

04:18

ta

Leaky Nun

hell, does Romanian even have preterite?

tchrist

Damned if I know.

Leaky Nun

@tchrist yes, and Italian is nothing.

tchrist

Sardinian has lots of short e and short o going to i and u.

Leaky Nun

@tchrist the vowel system development is completely different

you have long e and short i merger in Western Vulgar Latin

but long and short merger instead in Sardinian

tchrist

04:20

Leaky Nun

thanks

Romanian has "simple perfect" stătui

tchrist

gee

Leaky Nun

@tchrist I tend to think of it as, you know, umlaut.

tchrist

You're always supposed to look for yod in Romance philology.

Leaky Nun

sure

English:
*gulþą > gold
*gulþīnaz > gylden

tchrist

04:23

/u/ > /y/ is i-mutation, yes.

Leaky Nun

Neapolitan:
russum > russo
russam > rossa

similar enough

still metaphony

tchrist

That should be short-o > ɔ, right?

Leaky Nun

right

and short-o > u

grossum > gruosso
grossam > grossa

tchrist

Now you make me figure out whether metaphony and vowel harmony are similar or the same.

Leaky Nun

> Vowel harmony is sometimes used synonymously with metaphony. Usually, however, "vowel harmony" refers specifically to a synchronic process operating in a particular language, normally requiring all vowels in a word to agree in a particular feature (e.g. vowel height or vowel backness).

> Most commonly, the triggering vowel is in the first syllable of the word (i.e. this is a type of progressive metaphony), as in Turkish, Finnish or Hungarian. In some cases, however, the triggering vowel is in the last syllable, typically a suffix, as in many varieties of Andalusian Spanish.

tchrist

04:27

You can see why I wondered. :)

> In the Romance languages, metaphony was an early vowel mutation process that operated in all Romance languages to varying degrees, raising (or sometimes diphthongizing) certain stressed vowels in words with a final /i/ or /u/ or a directly following /j/. This is conceptually similar to the umlaut process so characteristic of the Germanic languages.
Metaphony is most extensive in the Italo-Romance languages, and applies to nearly all languages of Italy. However, it is absent from Tuscan, and hence from standard Italian.

Leaky Nun

e.g. in Finnish, the vowels in a word either belong to {a,e,i,o,u} or {ä,e,i,ö,ü}

but there isn't a yod in my examples

tchrist

Right, that's where I remember it from.

I know. :(

I don't think you can use yod to get to estuve, but I'm often wrong.

Leaky Nun

to get to estuve, one must first figure out from where.

tenui > tuve is also impossible

Spanish doesn't drop the n's.

@tchrist

tchrist

yes

It doesn't

I was looking at stuff about español antiguo.

Leaky Nun

alright

tchrist

04:34

Leaky Nun

so, what is the regularized form for estuve and tuve?

tchrist

tení, apparently.

> El estadio (1) corresponde a formas universalmente regularizadas en todas las variedades del español, el estadio (2) corresponde a formas generalmente regularizadas con formas arcaicas dialectales marginales, el estadio (3) corresponde a tendencias del español que se encuentran más asentadas en unos dialectos que en otros. Finalmente el estadio (4) es una tendencia regularizadora que sólo se encuentra en fases iniciales de adquisición de la lengua.

Leaky Nun

that isn't what I mean

I mean, the etymon of tuve

tchrist

> En el cambio del castellano antiguo al español moderno se produjeron numerosos cambios analógicos y regularizaciones, especialmente en el paradigma verbal. Por ejemplo, en español antiguo son frecuentes formas de pretérito perfecto simple en -uve muchas retenidas aún en la lengua moderna (anduve, tuve, ...) pero otras ya desaparecidas como (conuve 'conocí' o similarmente truxe 'traje', ...).

They just liked -uve by analogy, apparently.

Leaky Nun

by analogy of what? why specifically those verbs?

what is that truxi? it was traxi in Latin

tchrist

04:40

True.

We should ask how it got to traigo.

The -go thing out of nowhere happens quite a few other places, too, in 1s.

Leaky Nun

except those aren't out of nowhere

tchrist

traho has to have been weak.

The h will have disappeared.

Leaky Nun

the other -go's are from a yod in n or L

tchrist

Not this one, I think.

But there is the i?

Leaky Nun

indeed

tchrist

04:42

Why would that yod it, hm.

Leaky Nun

traho > trajo, you think?

tchrist

I wish people had written Vulgar Latin down, damn it.

Leaky Nun

but where's the fun in that?

tchrist

But the people who knew how to write, knew how to write it the "right" way, so didn't.

Leaky Nun

what was traigo in castellano antiguo?

tchrist

04:44

Spanish did not spring from Athena suddenly in the 11th century, but try finding precursors older than that.

I have exactly one volume of an Old Spanish dictionary, and I'll never find it.

valgo

Leaky Nun

que?

tchrist

L

sorry muttering

trajo seems possible

Meaning /j/

Leaky Nun

alright

then fortition of j

tchrist

That's why I muttered valgo < valeo

Leaky Nun

fortition of yod

valeo > valjo > valgo

tchrist

04:48

Unlike the route from vetulus to viejo

Oh there's a VL *veclus posited.

Leaky Nun

that is veclus > veLHo

tchrist

Which is normal.

Leaky Nun

LH is portuguese orthography

tchrist

Yeah.

Leaky Nun

have you found your dictionary?

tchrist

04:51

No, just my bed, if I'm lucky.

This is two nights in a row till 11. I never do that.

Leaky Nun

fun fact: find > found is Germanic, and found > founded is Romance.

fun fact: replace f by b above to get another correct statement

> bun bact

tchrist

fundación

Leaky Nun

indeed

tchrist

> Adam lay ybounden

Leaky Nun

bind?

tchrist

04:53

yes

Leaky Nun

bounded is from ?

bundus I suppose

tchrist

Depends which one.

Leaky Nun

there's only one

tchrist

> From Middle English bounde, from Old French bunne, from Medieval Latin bodina, earlier butina (“a bound, limit”)

Leaky Nun

right

tchrist

04:55

We don't use bounden very much anymore.

The bind one.

Leaky Nun

sure

tchrist

> From Middle English binden, from Old English bindan, from Proto-Germanic *bindaną (compare West Frisian bine, Dutch binden, Low German binnen, German binden, Danish binde), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰendʰ- (“to tie”) (compare Welsh benn (“cart”), Latin offendīx (“knot, band”), Lithuanian beñdras (“partner”), Albanian bend (“servant, henchman”), bind (“to convince, persuade, tame”), Ancient Greek πεῖσμα (peîsma, “cable, rope”), Sanskrit बध्नाति (badhnāti)).

Leaky Nun

do we have a Romance cognate of find?

pendo

pendeo

tchrist

Says compare pons.

But yes, pendo.

Leaky Nun

*ponts, consonant stem

pont-

that makes sense

o-grade

tchrist

04:58

> From Proto-Indo-European *pónteh₁s (“path, road”), from *pent- (“path”). Cognate with Sanskrit पथिन् (páthin), Ancient Greek πόντος (póntos), Old Armenian հուն (hun, “riverbed”), and Old English findan (English find).

That's under pons.

Leaky Nun

there's quite a lot of ablaut visible in eo

thanks

eunt < ejont

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English Language & Usage: Multi-Layer…