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Lexical changes from Classical Latin to Proto-Romance

Vocabulary of late (Vulgar) Latin not used in the prestigious/classical form From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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As Classical Latin developed into Proto-Romance, its lexicon underwent numerous changes.

Regularization

Irregular nouns and verbs tended to be either regularized or replaced with preexisting regular equivalents. Cf. the loss of edere 'to eat' in favour of manducare or its own regularized compound comedere. Similar motives underlie the general replacement of ferre 'carry' with portare or loqui 'speak' with parabolare and fabulari.[1]

Semantic drift

Various words experienced a significant change in meaning, notable examples being causa ('subject matter' → 'thing'), civitas ('citizenry' → 'city'), focus ('hearth' → 'fire'), mittere ('send' → 'put'), necare ('murder' → 'drown'), pacare ('placate' → 'pay'), and totus ('whole' → 'all, every').[2]

Certain words may have shed their originally lower-status or humble associations to become default unmarked terms, thus replacing the literary Classical equivalents. Cf. the general loss of equus 'horse' in favour of caballus (originally 'workhorse') or that of domus 'house' in favour of casa (originally 'hut').[3]

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Loss of short forms

Words that were felt to be too short or phonetically insubstantial were liable to be replaced, often with their own derivatives, hence auris 'ear' and agnus 'lamb' were rejected in favour of their diminutives auricula and agnellus.[4] This is most visible in the case of the word for today in French, aujourd'hui, a univerbation of au (itself being à and le) + jour + d' + hui, where hui is the descendant of Latin hodie and the whole lemma would instead roughly mean on the day of today.

Most Classical particles (such as an, at, autem, donec, enim, etc.) simply died out and survive nowhere in Romance.[5]

Coinages

There was a trend towards forming compound prepositions of the type ab ante, which at first simply combined the sense of their constituents (hence the original sense of ab ante was 'from before'). In time many would develop a generic sense, often simply that of one of their constituents (hence ab ante came to mean 'before', in competition with ante). Other examples attested in Late Antiquity are de inter, de retro, de foris, de intus, de ab, and de ex.[6]

A number of verb-forming (or extending) suffixes were popularized, such as -icare (based on the adjective ending -icus), -ulare (based on the diminutive -ul-), and -izare (borrowed from Greek).[7]

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Borrowing

Numerous foreign terms were borrowed into the Latin vernacular, a majority of which came from Greek, particularly in the domains of medicine, cooking, and Christian worship. A smaller fraction came from Gaulish or Germanic.[8]

Selected lexical comparisons

More information Meaning, Classical word ...
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See also

Explanatory notes

  1. [α]
    Clearly borrowed words are not counted as descendants. This excludes, for instance, the Italian word igne 'fire, which was taken from Latin.

    List of abbreviations:

    Fr. — French (central)
    OOcc. — Old Occitan
    Occ. — Occitan (central)
    OCat. — Old Catalan
    Cat. — Catalan (central)
    Ara. — Aragonese
    OSp. — Old Spanish
    Sp. — Spanish (central)
    Ast. — Asturian
    OPt. — Old Portuguese
    Pt. — Portuguese (central)
    Lig. — Ligurian
    Pie. — Piedmontese
    Lmb. — Lombard (Milanese)
    Rms. — Romansh
    Frl. — Friulan
    Vgl. — Vegliote
    OIt. — Old Italian
    It. — Italian
    Srd. — Sardinian (Logudorese)
    Sic. — Sicilian
    Ro. — Romanian
    ARo. — Aromanian
  2. [β]
    With the specialized sense of 'forward', cf. the Portuguese cognate.
  3. [γ]
    With the transferred sense of 'with', cf. the Catalan cognate. The original form in both languages, as attested in medieval texts, was ab.
  4. [δ]
    With the specialized sense of 'cathedral'.
  5. [ε]
    from 'domesticus.'
  6. [ζ]
    Survives in modern French as chez, a grammaticalized expression meaning 'at the house of', cf. Catalan ca and Italian ca'.
  7. [η]
    Only the Romanian word continues to mean 'cheek'.
  8. [θ]
    In the directional sense.
  9. [ι]
    Today mostly obsolete in the directional sense, cf. the Spanish and Catalan cognates.
  10. [κ]
    Now a feminine word, likely influenced by zi (f.) 'day'.
  11. [λ]
    Derived from *ex-curtus.
  12. [μ]
    With the specialized sense of 'pebble'.
  13. [ν]
    With the transferred sense of 'sword-lily'.
  14. [ξ]
    With the transferred sense of 'care (for)' and 'pay attention', cf. the Spanish and Catalan cognates.
  15. [ο]
    With the transferred sense of 'care'.
  16. [π]
    Had the sense of 'touch' in medieval times but has since come to mean 'play (an instrument)', cf. the Portuguese cognate.
  17. [ρ]
    Modern Spanish largo has come to mean 'long' and has completed ousted the original luengo (=Lat. longus) from that role.
  18. [σ]
    With the transferred sense of 'eloquence'.
  19. [τ]
    Etymology remains disputed.
  20. [υ]
    With the specialized sense of 'plough', cf. the Catalan, Occitan, and Portuguese cognates.
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Citations

General sources

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