On Feb 15, 2005, at 5:21 AM, d. collins wrote:
Mark D Lew écrit:Usually, but not always -- âme>anima, sûr>securus, chaîn>catena, rôle>rotulus.
In these cases, it's more than "a consonant" that became silent: a whole syllable.
Well, you could say the same of some of the s ones, eg île>isola. Anyway, I didn't mean to offer any theory about how the words, or the symbol, evolved. I was only noting that when I think of cognates in other Romance languages I notice the missing consonant and it isn't always an s. With "âme", my first thought is actually "alma", not "anima".
(And even in some of these cases, the circumflex does take the place of an s in the "evolution". Chaîne comes from catena, of course, but the form that precedes chaîne is chaisne (See Littré: Pour porter au col, eut une chaisne d'or, RAB. Garg. I, 8. Tandis que tu as gardé le silence [dit Apelles à Megabysus], tu sembloies quelque grande chose à cause de tes chaisnes et de ta pompe, MONT. IV, 49.))
Thanks, I didn't know about chaisne. My Petit Robert, in its brief etymology, mentions "chaeine" from 1080, but no "chaisne". The pattern of a syllable reducing to just "e" and then becoming a circumflex is also indicated in securus>segur>seür>sûr.
Again, I'm just noticing and speculating here. I'm really not studied in this at all (though I do find it interesting).
mdl
_______________________________________________ Finale mailing list Finale@shsu.edu http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
