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From: mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer)
Subject: Re: Plurals
Message-ID: <D14wG5.C4H@inter.NL.net>
Organization: NLnet
References: <19DEC94.11813889.0031@music.mus.polymtl.ca> <D12qsH.FqL@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> <19DEC94.18886466.0035@music.mus.polymtl.ca> <D143Jr.6A0@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>
Date: Wed, 21 Dec 1994 00:09:40 GMT
Lines: 70

In article <D143Jr.6A0@cogsci.ed.ac.uk>,
Ivan A Derzhanski <iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> wrote:
>In article <19DEC94.18886466.0035@music.mus.polymtl.ca> Alexander Kiefer <KA00@music.mus.polymtl.ca> writes:
>>In article <D12qsH.FqL@cogsci.ed.ac.uk> iad@cogsci.ed.ac.uk (Ivan A Derzhanski) writes:
>>>In article <19DEC94.11813889.0031@music.mus.polymtl.ca> Alexander Kiefer <KA00@music.mus.polymtl.ca> writes:
>[re languages borrowing words from their ancestors]
>>>>I think that usage of "loanword" is too general and misleading.
>>>
>>>Why?  How is borrowing a word from Latin into French different from
>>>borrowing a word from English or Arabic?  It is a different language.
>>
>>Because of the dialect continuum.
>
>Does the dialect continuum imply that every word of Latin is by virtue
>of this fact also a French word?
>
>Let's take an example.  The Latin word _catena_ `chain' was inherited
>by French, and, having undergone a series of regular sound changes, it
>assumed the form _chai^ne_.  Then at some point someone felt he needed
>a term for `information chain'.  He found the word _catena_ in a Latin
>dictionary, gallicised it slightly, and _cate`ne_ made an appearance.
>How is that different from the case of a Latin word making its way
>into a language less closely related or unrelated to Latin?
>
>The same for _cha~o_ vs _plano_ `flat, smooth' in Portuguese,
><sonA> vs <svar.na> `gold' in Hindi, ...
> [...]
>I didn't intend to sound confrontational.  Let's make that `if one can
>explain ...' or `if we can explain ...'.  I was simply wondering if
>your proposal didn't raise more questions than it answered.  Now,
>however, I see that things can indeed work as you say, although I
>continue to think that they can also work as I say.  :-)
>

Interesting discussion.  When I saw the phrase "nontransformed words"
(I think it was), my first reaction was one of rejection.  But then
it reminded me of the phenomenon of "cultismos" and "semi-cultismos",
as it's called by Spanish historical grammarians.  I have been trying
to think of a good example, but I can only come up with the triplet:

trecho / trato / (ex)tracto

all "from" Latin `tractus'.  The first word shows the normal development
[something like: tractu > traito > tretyu > trecho].  The second word
would be "semi-cultured", the third one "cultured", i.e. a loanword
from Latin.  Another example of `semi-culto' would be the word "Dios",
with its nominative -s.  It's not Latin, but it's not the normal
development either (which would have been *di'o).  

There are two ways of looking at this:  the "semi-cultured" words are
simply early loans from Latin, versus the "cultured", more recent loans.
This is Meyer-Lu"bke's analysis ("...words that don't have their
origin in an uninterrupted oral tradition [*]").  

Another way of looking at it is that words change at "different speeds".
This doesn't seem to me to be the case for a word like "extracto"
above, which I can only interpret as a loan from Latin.  But I'm not so 
sure about "trato" or "Dios".

I still don't like the term "untransformed words", but Meyer-Lu"bke's
phrase quoted above is equally unfortunate.


[*] Gramm, I, #2, quoted in an article ("Problemas del cultismo"),
by R. Beni'tez Claros.

-- 
Miguel Carrasquer         ____________________  ~~~
Amsterdam                [                  ||]~  
mcv@inter.NL.net         ce .sig n'est pas une .cig 
