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Latin Roots II. Nasal Increment. Nasal Increment. What is the nasal increment? How does it come to be inserted inside the root? Note that the rule system that we have developed does not allow for infixes. Nasal Increment. Observations. When the nasal appears, the ‘s’ of the root is deleted
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Nasal Increment • What is the nasal increment? • How does it come to be inserted inside the root? • Note that the rule system that we have developed does not allow for infixes
Observations • When the nasal appears, the ‘s’ of the root is deleted • compose vs component • [s] deletes before voiced consonants • [n] is a voiced consonant • So, the etymological structure could be • pos + n
Observations • Note that if [n] is inserted the ‘component’ is com + pons + e + nt • No way to delete the [s] • So it must be com + pos + n + e + nt
Nasal Increment • How does the nasal move inside the root • C + n → nC • metathesis
Complications • dimension • dis + met + n + e + t + ion • incumbent • why [m] and not [n]?
Nouns vs Verbs • Both nouns and verbs take the nasal increment • In verbs, the nasal metathesizes • In nouns, it does not • Why?
Nouns vs. Verbs • Perhaps, the noun formation is new and the verb formation is old • Note that English ‘stand/stood’ shows the nasal, indicating that it is IndoEuropean
Old and New • Compare ‘puncture’ and ‘pugnacious’ • ‘puncture’ has thematic ‘e’ • ‘pugnacious’ has thematic ‘a’ • ‘puncture’ with metathesis is old, ‘pugnacious’ without metathesis is new
Medial Vowel Weakening • ‘e’ will change to ‘i’ in the middle of a word when followed by 1 consonant
Different Possibilities • ‘a’ changes to ‘e’ • Then ‘e’ changes to ‘i’ as before • ex + fac + ie + nt > effecient > efficient
Different Possibilities • ‘e’ changes to ‘i’ as before • ‘a’ changes to ‘e’ when followed by 2 consonants • ‘a’ changes to ‘i’ when followed by 1 consonant
How to decide? • Possibility #1 contains 2 rules • Possibility #2 contains 3 rules • Maybe simpler rule set is better
Compounds • Compounds do not show medial vowel weakening • Perhaps compounding is a new formation
Compounds • In order to derive ‘magnificent’, there must be a rule or rules that convert ‘fac’ to ‘fic’ • But the rule that converts ‘fac’ to ‘fec’ does not apply in compounds • Therefore, there must be a rule a → i
Alternations between u/v • Recall that the characters ‘u’ and ‘v’ were once the same • But they represented two different sounds • [u] and [w] • Eventually [w] changed to [v] • And the characters ‘u’ and ‘v’ were converted to represent [u] and [v]
Two kinds of l • English and Latin have 2 kinds of l • sometimes called light and dark • light l is a front liquid and appears at beginning of syllables • dark l is a back liquid and appears before consonants • vowels raise before a dark l
‘s’ increment • Some roots take an increment [s] • Like the nasal increment, it is ancient and we don’t know its purpose
Reduplication • In many languages, morphology includes duplicating parts of a word • In English, we have chitchat, seesaw • Notice that in each case, the word is repeated, but the vowel is changed • chat ⇒ chatchat ⇒ chitchat
Reduplication • The root ‘sta’ will reduplicate • sta ⇒ stasta ⇒ stista ⇒ sista • in + sta + nt • in + sta + sta + nt • in + sti + sta + nt • in + si + sta + nt • insistant
‘to be’ • Proto-IndoEuropean appears to have had two verbs • labial (English ‘was’, ‘be’) • sibilant (English ‘is’)
Labial • Latin ‘fui’ = ‘I have been’ • Note: ‘future’
Sibilant • What is the etymological analysis of ‘present’? • prefix = ‘pre’ • present participle = ‘nt’ • thematic vowel = ‘e’ • Therefore, the root = ‘s’
