Reconstruction talk:Latin/illurum

Hi @Kwékwlos,

The descendants show a final alveolar tap. Is there an issue with posting that for the proto-form? Nicodene (talk) 16:22, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Well, since it is a broad transcription denoted in slashes (/), the value *r should be posited. I don't think there was ever a phonemic contrast between a rhotic tap and trill in early Romance, and Classical Latin/Proto-Romance itself has one phonemic *r. Even if they all share the alveolar flap, it may have been a result of later areal developments. Kwékwlos (talk) 16:27, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

@Kwékwlos The existence of that contrast is, as far as I know, uncontroversial for Ibero- and Occitano-Romance (medieval or otherwise). It may well be the result of a later, universal areal development, but that is the type of risk that one has to accept with reconstructions based on neighbouring languages. The existence of this lexeme at all, at the suggested time-depth, can be questioned along the same lines (if one posits relatively late borrowing from, say, early Catalan to the others).

The tap-trill contrast follows naturally from a general loss of phonemic consonant length in Western Romance (in other words degemination), which I have reflected in other transcriptions of this type. Nicodene (talk) 16:39, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

Degemination evidently occurred after the lenition of single voiceless stops, since otherwise the double stops would have the exact same reflexes as single stops. There is an area containing North Aragonese and Gascon (which is Gallo-Romance) that does not participate in lenition. I presume we are dealing with a linkage here. Kwékwlos (talk) 16:59, 26 January 2023 (UTC)

@Kwékwlos Yes, it did. The non-leniting Pyrenean island is problematic in a much wider context, since if we include those dialects in our reconstructions, then all of our transcriptions for Proto-Gallo-/Occitano-/-Western Romance should have the full set of original Latin geminates, and no lenition. The result would be effectively identical to Proto-Italo-Western Romance. (Certainly retreating to that stage is one option.)

I have thus far avoided this issue by not including the Pyrenean island in these reconstructions, treating it as an area isolated from developments in general Western Romance, at least in the formative stage. This may correspond somewhat to the late Romanization of the area (much of it was Basque speaking in the early medieval period). Nicodene (talk) 17:13, 26 January 2023 (UTC)