Reconstruction talk:Proto-West Germanic/krūci
Latest comment: 2 years ago by Benwing2
@Rua, Mahagaja: This is borrowed from Vulgar Latin *krutʃi ~ *krutsi. Is *krūci the best transcription for this term? --{{victar|talk}} 06:59, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
- It seems as good as anything; the symbol c isn't doing any other work in PWG transcriptions. Anglo-Frisian /tʃ/ ~ Dutch/Low German/High German /ts/ isn't a pattern that occurs in native words, so I don't think we can break it down into phonemes that occur in native words and still keep a unified reconstruction. The only other option I can think of is two reconstructions: *krūki for Anglo-Frisian and *krūtsi (with t and s as two separate phonemes) for the rest, but that's unsatisfying. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:36, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
- You can't just go inventing phonemes... —Rua (mew) 11:45, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Rua: Then what do you recommend? Two different reconstructions, one for Anglo-Frisian and one for the others? It does happen that languages have rare phonemes found only in loanwords. It would be more convincing, of course, if there were other Latin loanwords that had this same distribution. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:14, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
- Yes, I don't think there's a lot of evidence that this word dates back to PWG. It's clearly Christian vocabulary, which would not have spread very far before the religion itself started to become a thing. And it's known that the northern populations didn't adopt Christianity until much later. The Saxons famously resisted it until the 8th century. Moreover, since Latin vocabulary and writing spread along with the religion, it is very easy for such a word to appear in writing before it's widespread in speech. —Rua (mew) 12:21, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
- This isn't the first Christian term we propose existed in PWG. I think the semantical issues are 1) even if the term entered one branch and quickly spread throughout WG, it's impossible to pinpoint the source, and 2) we're calling Frankish PWG so even if the word was adopted into Frankish and spread from there, that's still PWG yielding the word in every branch. Church texts are some of the earliest texts of Old Saxon, so even if Christianity wasn't adopted by the people at large, early Saxon Christians were still speaking Saxon peppered with borrowed Christian terms. --
{{victar|talk}}14:54, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
- This isn't the first Christian term we propose existed in PWG. I think the semantical issues are 1) even if the term entered one branch and quickly spread throughout WG, it's impossible to pinpoint the source, and 2) we're calling Frankish PWG so even if the word was adopted into Frankish and spread from there, that's still PWG yielding the word in every branch. Church texts are some of the earliest texts of Old Saxon, so even if Christianity wasn't adopted by the people at large, early Saxon Christians were still speaking Saxon peppered with borrowed Christian terms. --
- Yes, I don't think there's a lot of evidence that this word dates back to PWG. It's clearly Christian vocabulary, which would not have spread very far before the religion itself started to become a thing. And it's known that the northern populations didn't adopt Christianity until much later. The Saxons famously resisted it until the 8th century. Moreover, since Latin vocabulary and writing spread along with the religion, it is very easy for such a word to appear in writing before it's widespread in speech. —Rua (mew) 12:21, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
- @Rua: Then what do you recommend? Two different reconstructions, one for Anglo-Frisian and one for the others? It does happen that languages have rare phonemes found only in loanwords. It would be more convincing, of course, if there were other Latin loanwords that had this same distribution. —Mahāgaja · talk 12:14, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
- You can't just go inventing phonemes... —Rua (mew) 11:45, 30 April 2021 (UTC)
- Here's another PWG word with *c: Reconstruction:Proto-West Germanic/unciju. Interestingly OE has ċ ~ ds ~ ts. --
{{victar|talk}}05:12, 1 May 2021 (UTC)- So, you have a source that states *c is a phoneme in PWG? —Rua (mew) 09:58, 1 May 2021 (UTC)
- To echo Mahagaja, what would you recommend as an alternative? --
{{victar|talk}}05:11, 2 May 2021 (UTC)- Reading between the lines, I think her recommendation is to say that each of the oldest attested words was borrowed directly from Latin and to leave PWG out of it. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:46, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
- We have plenty of examples WG borrowing from Late Latin and Vulgar Latin, and we know Latin was undergoing velar palatalization by the 5th century, so it stands to reason that WG is going to borrow Latin terms with velar palatalization. --
{{victar|talk}}20:54, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
- We have plenty of examples WG borrowing from Late Latin and Vulgar Latin, and we know Latin was undergoing velar palatalization by the 5th century, so it stands to reason that WG is going to borrow Latin terms with velar palatalization. --
- Reading between the lines, I think her recommendation is to say that each of the oldest attested words was borrowed directly from Latin and to leave PWG out of it. —Mahāgaja · talk 07:46, 2 May 2021 (UTC)
- To echo Mahagaja, what would you recommend as an alternative? --
- I left a comment at *unciju. It seems that these Late Latin borrowings into West Germanic didn't occur once in the parent language then were inherited by the daughters, but rather that they happened separately in a small handful of languages, namely Old English and Old High German (or Frankish > Old High German and Old Dutch, then from OHG > Old Saxon > Old Frisian). If this be the case, then a reconstruction of PWGmc for these terms would seem unsubstantiated Leasnam (talk) 16:45, 6 May 2021 (UTC)