borrowing pronouns

[Max W Wheeler]

On Mon, 15 Mar 1999, maher, johnpeter wrote:

> "Vuestra Merced" is a folk etymology.

> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal wrote:

> > "maher, johnpeter" <jpmaher at neiu.edu> wrote:

> > >In addition, Castilian has "Vd/Usted" from Arabic "ustaeth" 'teacher;

> > 1. Surely ...

> Whoah! --- The rhetorical emission  "surely" [vel sim : "clearly, certainly
> vel sim] is hot air emitted in the absence of argument, evidence or
> homework.

> Spell out the phonetic developments and refute the ascription to Arabic

Well, part of the argument involves, would you believe it?, some
comparative linguistics. Corresponding to Sp. <usted>, Ptg has <voce^>,
and Catalan has <voste`>. In renaissance Spanish we have not only
<usted> but also <vuesarced>, <voac'e>, <vuce'>, <vuced>, <vusted>; and
in mod. Sp dialects (including America) <buste'>. With all those,
alongside, of course, of the perfectly well attested <vuestra merced>
Cat. <vostra merce`> the similarity between Mod Sp <usted> and Ar
<usta:d> begins to look rather less interesting.

I go along with Miguel CV on this, and the accusation that he hadn't
done his homework is gratuitously offensive. If JPM had done his, he'd
have known the sort of facts I mention in the previous paragraph.

Max
___________________________________________________________________________
Max W. Wheeler <maxw at cogs.susx.ac.uk>
School of Cognitive and Computing Sciences
University of Sussex, Falmer, Brighton BN1 9QH, UK
Tel: +44 (0)1273 678975; fax: +44 (0)1273 671320
___________________________________________________________________________