Q: Latin loans into other languages

[roger wright]

----------------------------Original message----------------------------


Romance languages are obviously a special case, but worth mentioning
even so; in general it is has been just the stem of a Latin noun
or adjective that's been borrowed, and the morphological endings are
those of the borrowing language. Thus Latin RADIUS was borrowed as
Spanish "radio" (to mean the radius of a circle), and despite the [-o]
it would be wrong for us to derive Spanish "radio" from the Latin dative
or ablative form RADIO. Maybe something similar applies to all languages
that have their own obligatory nominal morphology (by obligatory I mean
that the stem doesn't usually appear as a whole word in itself).
     But sometimes a complete Latin form has indeed been borrowed whole
in Romance; Spanish "radium" means radium, as in English, even though
[-um] (or in practice [-un]) isn't a Spanish morpheme. We can feel sure
that the word "radio" (with this meaning) is indeed a borrowing from
Latin rather than a native development; the word which does derive
directly from the Latin noun in Spanish is "rayo", meaning a ray (which
we can be sure comes from the accusative form RADIUM, partly because
very nearly all Spanish nouns seem to come from the accusative form,
and partly because RADIUS would have given "rayos", as CAROLUS >
Carlos). The form "radium" probably comes immediately into Spanish from
French or English rather than Latin, of course, but the point is that it
hasn't been reformed even so, and so far as I know neither French nor
Spanish scientists have thought of calling it **"radius". (Standard
Italian can't usually accept word-final [-m], so it's "radio" there.)

Which seems to suggest that the accusative form has generally been
thought to be the citation form, and thus the one to be borrowed if for
some reason the borrowers don't want to confine themselves to
borrowing the stem, adding their own inflectional morphology. It has
been argued that the accusative was the citation form in original Latin,
too, but the lemmata of dictionaries and grammars of Roman times, at
least, don't always support this, so this may not be right.

One way to test this in Welsh, etc, and other non-Romance languages, is
to look at imparisyllabic nouns. In the case of e.g. HOMO, genitive
HOMINIS, accusative HOMINEM, the source form might even be obvious (in
the same way as in Romance, standard Italian "uomo" undoubtedly comes
from the nominative, as usual in Italy, and the Spanish "hombre" comes
undoubtedly from the accusative, as usual in Spain). My guess is that
Morris Jones simply (and understandably) chose a source form that seemed
appropriate.
                                                RW


On Tue, 24 Apr 2001, Larry Trask wrote:

>----------------------------Original message----------------------------
>A question has arisen on another list about loans from Latin into other
>languages.  The question is this: in such borrowings, which form of a Latin
>noun or adjective is borrowed?
>
>In Basque, it is almost always the accusative (masculine for an adjective),
>though there are some exceptions: a few nominatives and even one vocative.
>My questioner is wondering whether borrowing of the accusative is usual,
>and I don't know.
>
>I've looked at Morris Jones's history of Welsh, and he usually cites the
>Latin nominative as the source of a borrowing, though occasionally he cites
>the accusative instead.  I suppose he has good reason for this, but he
>doesn't seem to discuss the matter, and the apparently general
>disappearance of the Latin endings in Welsh makes it impossible for me to
>judge.
>
>So: in Welsh, or in any other relevant language, which form of a Latin noun
>or adjective is typically borrowed?
>
>
>Larry Trask
>COGS
>University of Sussex
>Brighton BN1 9QH
>UK
>
>larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk
>
>Tel: (01273)-678693 (from UK); +44-1273-678693 (from abroad)
>Fax: (01273)-671320 (from UK); +44-1273-671320 (from abroad)
>