Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Silvano Newsgroups: alt.usage.english, sci.lang Subject: Re: Somewheres Date: Tue, 3 Sep 2024 08:59:02 +0200 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 40 Message-ID: References: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Injection-Date: Tue, 03 Sep 2024 08:59:04 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="18c4eb7ac207fc1318819285dc09d60b"; logging-data="3428546"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX1/V/YsVbobvhfOfapxzaI8ZYAY6ZHY3NdQ=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.3; WOW64; rv:38.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/38.0.1 Cancel-Lock: sha1:1BJvmV6ti4rX8xqbfX/8BxE+pdw= X-Antivirus-Status: Clean In-Reply-To: X-Antivirus: Avast (VPS 240902-8, 2.9.2024), Outbound message Bytes: 3299 Christian Weisgerber hat am 02.09.2024 um 21:48 geschrieben: > On 2024-09-02, Peter Moylan wrote: > >> Some southern Italian dialects have dropped a few final vowels, but >> this does not extend to northern dialects or the mainstream version of >> the language. > > Okay, this opportunity is as good as any to mention something I've > been burning to post ever since I re-read it in Akire/Rosen: > > Have you ever wondered why the third person plural present tense > forms of Italian verbs are so strangely stressed, e.g., pàrlano > instead of *parlàno? And where is that -o from anyway? Spanish > doesn't have it and if you look at Latin (-ant), there's no source > for it. > > Oh, you haven't wondered? ;-) > > Apparently Old Italian had the expected ending -an, so what happened? > The blame goes to the 'to be' word. The Latin first singular "sum" > and third plural "sunt" both ended up regularly as "son" in Old > Italian. But that was the only first person form that didn't have > -o, so eventually it picked one up, producing "sono". Now, since > the first singular and third plural had already merged, "sono" also > became the third pural. And from there the -o spread to the third > plural of all other verbs, but as a latecomer it didn't move the > stress. Please note, however, that the first singular and third plural present forms merged only in "sono". > It's an intriguing explanation, especially since it includes two > developments that ran in opposite directions: First the addition > of -o from many forms to one, then the spread of -o from one form > to many. I would guess the strong overall tendency toward open > syllables in Italian had something to do with it. I would guess the strong overall tendency toward open syllables in Italian was the main reason for this development.