txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....

[Eduard Selleslagh]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2001 5:16 AM

> On 28 Dec 2000, Rick Mc Callister wrote:
[snip]

>>  Posner also cites Sardinian kateddu "little dog, puppy" < *ket- +
>> -ellu [Posner 1996: 86]

> This looks like a direct reflex of Lat. <catellus>, given that Sard.
> -dd- from Lat. -ll- is regular.

>> which suggests the possibility of
>> catulus/catellus > *katlu > *katju/kakju/kacju > *kac^o > cach-orro

>> although I imagine an /e/ would be expected, as in lacte- > leche

> Span. -ech- regularly results from Lat. -act-, but other situations
> producing Span. -ch- may leave a preceding /a/ unchanged, as <ancho> from
> <amplus>, so *cach- <- *catlus <- <catulus> is reasonable. Does anyone know
> why <leche> is feminine?

[Snip]

> DGK

[Ed Selleslagh]
Just a few thoughts. Don't crucify me for it.

Maybe we should write: *cacho < *catlo < catulum (acc.). The -orro goes back to
the Mediterranean infix -rr-, which expresses an exaggerated quality, and is
hence often augmentative/pejorative, cf. Cast. 'ventorro'. See the article "Los
vocablos en -rr- de la lengua sarda. Conexiones con la península ibérica",
by Mary Carmen Iribarren Argaiz, in Fontes Linguae Vasconum 76 (sept-dec 1997),
pp. 335-354.

Why is 'leche' feminine? In general, grammatical gender of certain classes of
Spanish words (e.g.-or) is rather unstable or variable, although in the latter
case different genders for the same word express different shades. Examples:

-To sailors 'la mar' is feminine, to the rest of us it is masculine 'el mar'.
In French 'la mer' is always feminine, and in Latin 'mare' is neuter.(Cf.
'ship' in English)

-'la calor' is unbearable, but 'el calor', the normal kind, may be pleasant (in
increasing order of unpleasantness: el calor, la calor, los calores, las
calores, according to Spanish friends of mine, and slightly tongue-in-cheek).
In French, 'la chaleur' is always feminine.

Maybe 'la leche' is just the natural thing to say, isn't it ?  I mean to people
who speak a language that seems to treat grammatical gender rather loosely, at
least historically (Maybe a Basque influence on early Castilian? Basque only
distinguishes animate/inanimate). Milk is strongly linked to female mammals. In
(modern) Greek they say 'thilikí' (<the:lyke:) for 'feminine gender', which
is derived from the word for 'nipple, breast'.

Ed.