Cad'inorian vs. Romance Thread

[BGMan]

I've sometimes wondered what Verdurian and its relatives would look like if they developed from Latin instead of Cad'inor, but with the same sound changes (i.e., sort of like Wenedyk for Polish) -- similarly, what the major Romance languages would look like if they developed from Cad'inor instead of Latin.

[Mornche Geddick]

You'd have to start out with Vulgar Latin, not Classical Latin.

So, anybody know where to find a good lexicon of VL?

[hwhatting]

So, anybody know where to find a good lexicon of VL?

This is a start.

[Kuchigakatai]

I've sometimes wondered what Verdurian and its relatives would look like if they developed from Latin instead of Cad'inor, but with the same sound changes (i.e., sort of like Wenedyk for Polish) -- similarly, what the major Romance languages would look like if they developed from Cad'inor instead of Latin.

If you like romlangs that sounds like a fairly interesting project actually, and a project that I think no one has carried out before. I like romlangs but I'm not familiar with Zompist's modern Central languages (Verdurian, Ismain, etc.), so I can't make sketches yet... I don't know if I'll get around it.

You'd have to start out with Vulgar Latin, not Classical Latin.

So, anybody know where to find a good lexicon of VL?

To pull this off well, you'd have to start with both CL and VL really, adopting continuous learned and semi-learned borrowings into the descendants just as Zompist's modern Central adopts words from Cadhinor.

(Also, I find the usual distinction between CL and VL plainly ridiculous, since CL and VL are just registers of the same language, Latin. Yes, in the Roman Republic and Empire, there was morphosyntax and vocabulary that rarely if ever got written down but survived in Romance (e.g. ecce/eccum hīc > Portuguese aqui, Old French ci, Italian qui, Romanian aci; or the have-perfects in the TAM system) and morphosyntax and vocabulary that became, or was always, so lofty it stopped being used entirely so it didn't survive in Romance (e.g. flēre 'to cry', īlia 'guts (poetic)', or syntax sandwiching in noun phrases). This is also true of tons of other languages, such as 18th century English, except that we don't say there was a Classical English and a Vulgar English at the time. The Wikipedia article says "Vulgar Latin had no official orthography of its own."--what does that even mean? Would an article on 18th century English point out that the colloquial ways of speaking English at the time didn't have "an official orthography of their own" (different from standard English!)?

A colloquial word is just a synonym of more formal words or expressions, and mutatis mutandis also colloquial morphosyntax, but somehow in Latin the colloquial registers are often thought of as a Different Language, even in the 1st century BC when there wasn't much of a distance between speech and writing. If you like to distinguish CL and VL, you might as well also distinguish Classical Spanish from Vulgar Spanish today, in the 21st century. Okay, I think I should stop myself from going into a much longer rant now...)

This is a start.

I get:

Accès refusé ! Pour vous ouvrir l'accès, veuillez contacter gilles.souvay@atilf.fr.

Maybe you can access it without a special permission because you're in Germany?

[hwhatting]

It works from my PC, but I get the same message when I try it from my mobile...

[hwhatting]

It seems that the problem is with the direct link. If you follow this link:
http://www.atilf.fr/spip.php?article146, click on "Publications", and then on "Consultation du dictionnaire" in the side bar, it should work. (The VL entries are under "Étymons protoromans".)

[Kuchigakatai]

It seems that the problem is with the direct link. If you follow this link:
http://www.atilf.fr/spip.php?article146, click on "Publications", and then on "Consultation du dictionnaire" in the side bar, it should work. (The VL entries are under "Étymons protoromans".)

Ah, I see, now I can get to it. Here's a good direct link:

Dictionnaire Etymologique Roman

Don't you love it when programmers make websites in a way that they're hard to bookmark? :)
(I sure f****** don't.)

[hwhatting]

Yep

[malloc]

(Also, I find the usual distinction between CL and VL plainly ridiculous, since CL and VL are just registers of the same language, Latin. Yes, in the Roman Republic and Empire, there was morphosyntax and vocabulary that rarely if ever got written down but survived in Romance (e.g. ecce/eccum hīc > Portuguese aqui, Old French ci, Italian qui, Romanian aci; or the have-perfects in the TAM system) and morphosyntax and vocabulary that became, or was always, so lofty it stopped being used entirely so it didn't survive in Romance (e.g. flēre 'to cry', īlia 'guts (poetic)', or syntax sandwiching in noun phrases). This is also true of tons of other languages, such as 18th century English, except that we don't say there was a Classical English and a Vulgar English at the time. The Wikipedia article says "Vulgar Latin had no official orthography of its own."--what does that even mean? Would an article on 18th century English point out that the colloquial ways of speaking English at the time didn't have "an official orthography of their own" (different from standard English!)?

From what I understand, though, vulgar Latin had considerably different morphology than classical Latin, especially among nouns which had lost most case distinctions. That seems like enough reason to treat them as distinct, particularly since it was the isolating declension of vulgar Latin rather than the fusional declension of the classical variety that fed into Romance languages.

[Mornche Geddick]

Perhaps an analogy might be made between Classical / Vulgar Latin and Literary / Colloquial Welsh today.

[Kuchigakatai]

From what I understand, though, vulgar Latin had considerably different morphology than classical Latin, especially among nouns which had lost most case distinctions. That seems like enough reason to treat them as distinct, particularly since it was the isolating declension of vulgar Latin rather than the fusional declension of the classical variety that fed into Romance languages.

Nah, it's trivial to show that case was well alive in classical times in the 1st centuries BC and AD. I don't know who you got the idea that "most" case distinctions had already died by the time of Classical Latin from, but whoever it was should've read more. For one, it's attested aplenty in graffiti at Pompeii from the 1st century AD, including graffiti with terrible spellings and outright vulgar (in the modern sense) content. For another one, it survives into Romance.

Some examples from Pompeii:

• secundus prime suae ubique isse salute. / rogo, domina, ut me ames.
  (In standard orthography: Secundus primae suae ubique esset salutem. Rogo, domina, ut me ames.)
  
  'Secundus writes this to his favourite, wherever she is. My mistress [with power over me], I ask you to love me.'
  (CIL I.10.7, at the "House and Office of Volusius Iuvencus", on the left of the door)

Although there are Old Latin inscriptions with the nominative singular -s missing (notably in the 3rd-century BC epitaph of Lucius Cornelius Scipio at the beginning), it survived in Old French and Old Occitan, so the -s in Secundus likely stands for a sound. The dative -ae in primae is spelled -e since at the time [aɛ̯] had merged into [ɛ], but the point is that this dative singular was still there in speech, surviving later on into modern Romanian.

• futebatur, inquam futuebatur, civium romanorum atractis pedibus cunus, inqua nule aliae veces erant nisissei dulcisime et pissimae.
  (In standard orthography: Futuebatur, inquam futuebatur, civium romanorum attractis pedibus cunnus, in qua nullae aliae voces erant nisi dulcissimae et piissimae.)
  
  'The c*nt of the Roman people got f*cked, f*cked I say, with the legs grabbed back [i.e. r*ped]. And that day there were no voices except sweet ones and respectful ones.'
  (political polemic as a parody of orators; CIL IV.1261, at the "House of the Tragic Poet", on the outside wall)

This one is interesting because it shows the nominative plural -ae was perfectly alive, misspelled as -e (nule, dulcisime). This ending is believed to either not have survived anywhere, or to have phonologically merged in Italian/Romanian with accusative -as (> [ai] > [e]).

• Filius salax, qud tu mulierorum difutuisti?
  (In standard orthography/morphology: Filius salax, quot tu mulierum defutuisti?)
  
  'My lustful son, how many women have you f*cked?'
  (CIL IX.8.3, at the "House of the Centenary", in the atrium)

Here, the genitive plural of mulier 'woman', mulierum, has been analogized with the 2nd declension ending -orum. It may seem surprising as the 2nd declension is associated with masculine and neuter nouns, but this is exactly the outcome we see in modern Romanian where the genitive plural ending survives as -or in the feminine article suffix and feminine demonstrative/indefinite pronouns. Note how the nominative filius is used as a vocative here, as opposed to standard fili, suggesting an early loss of the vocative at Pompeii.

Perhaps an analogy might be made between Classical / Vulgar Latin and Literary / Colloquial Welsh today.

I don't know anything about Welsh to comment on this.

[kodé]

My recollection from back when I knew a lot more about Latin and Romance was that the change from a 5 vowel inventory with contrastive length to a 7 vowel inventory without a length contrast plus the loss of word-final <m> really blew up the case system, leading to much greater syncretism than in Classical Latin. So, for instance, vanilla 1st and 2nd declension nouns that looked like this in Classical Latin:

a	ae	us	ī
ae	ārum	ī	ōrum
ae	īs	ō	īs
am	ās	um	ōs
ā	īs	ō	īs

became this:

a	ɛ	os	i
ɛ	aro	i	oro
ɛ	is	o	is
a	as	o	os
a	is	o	is

Especially in the singular, that’s a ton of syncretism! Though the sound change wouldn’t have touched the dative and ablative plural, which I guessed just disappeared for non-sound-change-related reasons.

That was followed by the increasing usage of <ad> + accusative for the dative and <de> + accusative for the genitive. But FWIW, the distinction between nominative and accusative lasted for a long, long time; I know Old French retained that case distinction for many nouns.

[hwhatting]

And as I think Ser has pointed out somewhere, Romanian has a merged Genitive and Dative in its case system, so the minimum case system we must assume for Proto-Romance is Nom., Acc., Gen.-Dat.

[BGMan]

Latin cases appear to be more unstable than, say, Slavic ones -- I suspect because Latin's cases resemble each other too much, whereas the Slavic ones are more distinct. But since Verdurian has cases, I think the Romance mirror would too, and probably not change too much from Latin. So the accusative singular would remain unchanged from Latin. BUT -- Verdurian doesn't tend to have final s, except maybe if it's a stressed syllable. So Romance Verdurian would be more like Italian or Romanian in that regard. So masculine nominative plural could be -i but the accusative plural be -î, from -os > -oi ?

I imagine Romance Verdurian could derive its definite article from ipse like Sardinian did.

The most interesting question, IMO, would be the sound changes from Latin to Romance Verdurian. I mean, some obvious ones would be lactem to laže. But how to make ď distinct from d? Maybe have ď evolve intervocalically as it did in Spanish, but have d arise from intervocalic nt or t?

Verb conjugating. Portar in the present tense: porto, portai, porta, portam, portad, portan? (Can you end a word with -d? Or would it be portač? Although I would expect that in Xurnese Romance...)

[Emily]

The most interesting question, IMO, would be the sound changes from Latin to Romance Verdurian. I mean, some obvious ones would be lactem to laže. But how to make ď distinct from d? Maybe have ď evolve intervocalically as it did in Spanish, but have d arise from intervocalic nt or t?

i'm working on a long-term large project where i'm switching proto-germanic and latin (classical, which i know is cheating but the phonology matches up a lot better) and deriving the germanic and romance languages from the "opposite" parent languages: so english, german, and norwegian will all descend from latin, and french, spanish, and romanian will all descend from proto-germanic. after spending some time trying to figure out how to develop the english (and scots, and icelandic) sounds /θ/ and /ð/ from latin, which didn't have them, in order to make the language as much like irl english as i could, i ultimately decided that it was better to leave these sounds out of english, as any sound change i came up with to create them would be historically unmotivated—there was no change from PG that created /θ/, it was simply retained from PG straight into modern english, and /ð/ (in most instances) is simply a phonemicized allophone of earlier /θ/, so a new rule to create these sounds out of latin would violate the core idea, which was seeing what would happen if latin followed the general course that irl proto-germanic did.* this is a roundabout way of saying i don't think a romance verdurian would (or should) have /ð/ unfortunately

*of course, proto-germanic did have /θ/, which means i could retain it in the new "romance" daughters; i eventually settled on keeping it in romanian and sardinian and losing it in the rest of the romance languages, since much like english and icelandic these languages are somewhat geographically isolated from the rest of the family and tend to be weirdos in comparison to the rest of them. but this isn't helpful for the proposed romance verdurian!

[Tropylium]

But how to make ď distinct from d? Maybe have ď evolve intervocalically as it did in Spanish, but have d arise from intervocalic nt or t?

Start one step earlier with *ð < Proto-Italic *θ still separate from *d? (You could use this same approach to also get e.g. /z/ for free.)