Talk:La Spezia-Rimini Line

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Contents 1 Vowel instability 2 Northern Italy 3 Romanian viaţă 4 To be merged ?

[edit] Vowel instability

User:Ihcoyc wrote in the article: "Instability of short vowels is also a trait of western Romance; as shown above, Latin lupus/lupum becomes lobo in Spanish, showing both voicing and the merger of short Latin /u/ and /o/, while in Italian the short /u/ is preserved"

This is clearly false: lobo shows a perfect Romance vowel quality, since lǔpu(m) in Latin had a short vowel. Italian lupo is instead problematic: it should have been lopo, as it actually is in many Central dialects (and lovo in Venetian). Almost all Italian (Tuscan) words coming directly from Latin show the merger of short Latin /u/ and (long) /o/ (and short /i/ and long /e/): for example, la pǔteu(m) -> it pozzo; la ǔlmu(m), -> it olmo; la nǐve(m) -> it neve (snow).

Some linguists have thought it could have been taken from Latin in Medieval times, from written sources (in this case there's no difference between short and long vowels, as they weren't distinguished graphically in Latin) or from some onomatopoeic expression such as il lupo ulula (the wolf howls). These explanations seem not to meet the requested criteria: the wolf was a very common animal in Italy to get a Latinized name and onomatopoeic altered words are extremely rare in Italian. A better example of "vowel instability" in western Romance languages could have been the loss of final vowels in French, Northern Italian dialects and Catalan and the strong reduction of medial vowels in the same languages: for example Latin-Gallic Augustodunum-> French Autun. Carnby 14:10, 24 August 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Northern Italy

The parenthesis "excluding the Northern Italian dialects, which could have had it in past times" is unclear. Why does the line run through Italy? Are the Northern Italian dialects more like French than like standard Italian? Or is this a historical line and the Northern Italian dialects arose later when those areas came under Italian rule? Joriki 06:43, 20 September 2005 (UTC)

The line is mostly a phonetic one, concerning voicing of intervocalic consonants; there are old North Italian texts with /Cl/ clusters intact and even some with /-s/ to mark the plural; however many texts are anonymous and it is difficult to say whether there was actually a preservation of Latin structures or simply a latinized writing fashion. It has been suggsted that North Italian dialects were similar to Rhaeto-Romance languages (Romansh, Ladin, Friulian), but this is only a hypothesis.Carnby 20:40, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Romanian viaţă

I'd like to point out that the Romanian word viaţă (life) does not derive from Latin vīta, as it is suggested in the table with plural examples. Latin vīta gave Romanian vită, which means cattle. Well, it might be difficult to imagine how life changed into cattle :P and maybe vită has another etymology, but in any case, the normal evolution of Latin vīta is Romanian vită. Now, viaţă is derived from the word viu (alife, from Latin vīvus) with the suffix -eaţă (from Latin -itia, corresponding to French -esse, Spanish -ez etc.).

I think a better word for the plurals example would be Latin aqua (water), which still exists in all Romance languages with the same meaning and makes the plural in -e in Romanian (apă - ape), which is the expected result of Latin -ae. Of course, there could be even better words. Dumiac 11:38, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Romanian viaţă derives from Popular Latin *vivitia < Latin vivus. Vită is listed as deriving from Latin vita directly. The change in meaning is not that extraordinary with the last example, because the word vită actually also means "a generic name given to any large domestic animal, especially if horned", and even more generally, it can mean "animal". You're right that the example should be replaced though; I replaced it with vită for now. Alexander 007 18:58, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Latin also had veterinus, "a draught animal"; and vitulus / vitula, "calf, foal, filly", that may be mixed up among the sources of these. If Romanian vită was taken directly from Latin, it may be a learned borrowing from Latin, not a continuous survival. Smerdis of Tlön 19:43, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Like most languages, Romanian has lots of learned borrowings from Latin, but I have not seen one source state that vită is one (I did not say "taken directly from Latin", I said it developed directly from Latin vita, not by way of an intermediary Vulgar Latin form, as in the case of *vivitia). Latin vitulus gave rise to Romanian viţel, "calf, etc." Alexander 007 19:47, 8 March 2006 (UTC)

Alexander 007, we're basicly saying the same thing; since Latin vīvus/Romanian viu and Latin -itia/Romanian -eaţă always existed in the language, the word viaţă could have been derived at any time since Vulgar Latin. I think Romanian vită is not a learnt borrowing, because it is such a common word and because its meaning changed. Romanian viţel comes from Latin vītellus (diminutive of vītulus, which in turn must be a diminutive deriving from vīta), otherwise the position of the stress and the preservation of l can't be explained. Dumiac 14:03, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

Correct, vită is not what we would find in a learned borrowing: it underwent a meaning change which we do not find in learned borrowings in Romanian. Yes, viţel is by way of vitellus. Alexander 007 19:40, 9 March 2006 (UTC)

I've deleted the comment on the meaning of now 'vită', which remained «vită [meaning] life, lives (in Romanian, "living thing")» 7:02, 18 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] To be merged ?

Excuse for my English. I try to write 'cause I really had to say that it would be wrong to merge this article with Romance plurals. There are several differences between eastern Romance languages. The plural forms described in the article are just an important and easy example.

• For instance, in Western Romances languages there are often voiced conosonants in intervocalic position: in Spanish you'll find jabón and in Franch savon for Englisch 'soap'. Italian, as a Eastern Romance language has sapone.

• There are much more double consonants in Italian than in French or Spanisch. For 'cat': you've Spanisch gato and French chat, while Italian has gatto.

Sadly, at the moment this article is still incomplete. That is the only problem, but please don't merge. --Invitamia 21:38, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

Alright, I see what you mean, but the different plural endings are one of the differences, aren't they? We could merge the other article into this one... FilipeS 21:43, 7 June 2007 (UTC)

--The problem is that La Spezia - Rimini doesn't withstand much scrutiny with regard to pluralization. There's the controversy of squeezing most of Northern Italy into an -s type, and while most of Sardinia normally has so-called Eastern Romance features, plurals are formed with -s. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 24.183.55.166 (talk) 17:43, 29 September 2007 (UTC)

Then come up with a different title, and merge the two articles. FilipeS 19:44, 30 September 2007 (UTC)