Zeko-Romance development thread

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Zekoslav
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Re: Zeko-Romance development thread

Post by Zekoslav »

Thanks for this comprehensive list of ideas. Since I'm really still brainstorming about what the language's vowels might be, it will be of great help.

Metaphony is interesting. It's present in nearly all Romance Languages to some extent, but the details differ too much to be a result of common inheritance, rather each language had it's own metaphony applied to it's already specific vowel system. There is actually a Western Romance metaphony, /e/ > /i/ and /o/ > /u/ before a word-final /i/, which applies to the outcome of merger between short "i" and long "e" and short "u" and long "o" respectively, so it looks like it happened after the classic-seven vowel system had already been established. But Portuguese and Spanish have specific, more extensive metaphonies not shared with other languages, nor with each other, and instead of looking more recent they look more ancient than the Western Romance metaphony: in some conditions, namely before /nj/ followed by a stressed vowel, Latin short "u" and long "o" are distinguished in Spanish, even if they merge in all other cases and in all other languages. So there was some tendency for sub-phonemic metaphony for a long time before it was phonemicised and widespread isoglosses like merger of short "u" and long "o" could spread over already differentiated areas. It all shows I can be very creative, I just have to brainstorm a bit and wait for an eureka moment to strike. [:)]
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:hrv: [:D], :bih: :srb: [;)], :eng: [:D], :fra: [:|], :lat: [:(], :deu: [:'(]

A linguistics enthusiast who occasionally frequents the CBB.

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Zekoslav
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Posts: 340
Joined: 07 Oct 2017 16:54

Re: Zeko-Romance development thread

Post by Zekoslav »

1st declension nominative plural: -Æ or -AS ?

Old French and Old Occitan, which distinguish Latin nominative and accusative plural for masculines, don't distinguish it for feminines. While 2nd declension masculines have -I in the nominative and -OS in the accusative, 1st declension feminines have -AS in both cases.

There is an idea that this 1st declension nominative plural in -AS is pan-Romance and more archaic than -Æ. It would be a direct continuation of PIE -eh2es, replaced in Classical Latin by -ae < -ai by analogy to -i < -oi, and it would be present not only in Gallo-Romance but in Eastern Romance as well (sound changes -as > -ai > -e would make it identical to -Æ except not causing palatalization).

If this is true, my super-archaic Romance language would definitely have to have -AS in the 1st declension nominative plural, which would lead to a similar pattern of distinguishing N and A for masculines but not for feminines as in Gallo-Romance. However, I considered that -AS instead of -Æ might be an innovation caused by A singular -AM merging with the N singular -A following the loss of final /m/. This would have led to an unusual situation where two cases were merged in the unmarked number while being distinguished in the marked number, promptly resolved by replacing the N with the A in the plural. Then again my own native language has the same unusual situation for inanimate masculines...

If we take this as an excuse to preserve the N -Æ vs. A -AS distinction at least initially, that might lead to some interesting developments. I fancied -Æ replacing -AS eventually, the opposite of what happened in mainstream Romance. Maybe it would happen just-so, maybe it could be justified by the accusative not being the everything-except-nominative case as in mainstream Romance, or maybe because the neuter N/A HÆC helps N HÆC replace A HAS in feminines too.

Anyone got a paper successfully defending either idea on Proto-Romance feminine plurals to help me decide? Which of my own ideas do you like the most?
Languages:
:hrv: [:D], :bih: :srb: [;)], :eng: [:D], :fra: [:|], :lat: [:(], :deu: [:'(]

A linguistics enthusiast who occasionally frequents the CBB.

- Guide to Slavic accentuation
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