Re: Harrap: Radical changing nouns, olho/olhos?

From: António Marques (m.ap_at_sapo.pt)
Date: 03/29/05 

Date: Tue, 29 Mar 2005 23:23:29 +0100

Ruud Harmsen wrote:

> Which Latin case or cases led to the Portuguese words? Oblique case
> oculu (singular), oculos (plural)? Which u was long in those, the
> first, the second, both?

And you'll see why I mentioned Asturian (Asturianu). When they write
their masculines in -u, they are not just trying to be different from
spanish - they have an -o ending - it's the neutral. Why is this relevant?

In iberian romance, words originate from the accusative. The
accusative for both neutral and masculine had the same vowel, if
memory serves, something floating from u to o. It happened in latin
that the nominative -us (masculine) underwent a differentiation from
the accusative plural -os, getting a closed u. That in turn influenced
the (masculine) accusative singular. So, we got to have different
vowels for the neutral and the masculine. The masculine's closed u is
the one and only thing that caused vowel closure in the preceding
syllable. Asturian is the (still) living example of how the masculine
and neutral did have different vowels.

It's convoluted but you'll get there.

In romanian it's different - ablaut happened in a lot more cases. In
fact, romace ablaut is a world in itself. 

-- 
am
laurus : rhodophyta : brezoneg : smalltalk : stargate

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