Mauretania through romance sound changes.

[killerbee256]

Hello everyone, I've finally found time to return the project I posted about before. I need some help with processing Mauretania through various western romance sound changes. Skimming all the references suggested to me before this is what I've got so far:
french = Morétagne
italian = Moretagna
occitan = Moretanha
castillan = Moretaña
catalan = Moretanya
portuguese = Moretanha
*visigothic = Moretanna
I'm unsure of how the "et" in the middle of the word should change.

*hypothetical Visigothic era common ancestor of Spanish, Portuguese and Catalan

 

[Gavril]

At least one correction: in Castillian and Portuguese (and maybe some of the other languages), the -t- should be voiced to -d-: thus Moredaña / Moredanha.

 

[bearded]

italian = Moretagna

In Italian the country is called Mauritania. In French Mauritanie, as far as I know.

 

[jazyk]

In Portuguese the country is called Mauritânia.

 

[Nino83]

I think killerbee is interested in knowing what the noun would look like if it weren't a cultism.
Mauritania > Moretagna in Italian (like campanea > campagna or vinea > vigna).
As Gavril said, north of the La Spezia-Rimini line the intervocalic -t- becomes -d- (this is true for French, Northern Italian, Occitan, Catalan, Spanish, Portuguese, Galician).

 

[bearded]

I think killerbee is interested in knowing what the noun would look like if it weren't a cultism.

Had he specified this, it would have been of help. And I cannot trace ''the project I posted about before'', that he mentions.

 

[Nino83]

Hi, bearded man.
This is the thread: Evolution of Latin -ium ending in french

 

[bearded]

Thank you, Nino.

 

[Nino83]

You're welcome.
I'd say that in Italian it could be both Mauritagna and Moritagna, because sometimes unstressed -au- didn't become a monophthong (see autunno vs. automne [ɔtɔn(ə)], otoño, outono).
otonno, otogno ...

 

[jazyk]

Then I think it would have been Mouretanha in Portuguese, as Latin au has become ou, as in Maurus - mouro, aurum - ouro, taurus - touro, etc., and I think only unstressed t's have become d's, which is not the case here.

 

[killerbee256]

Had he specified this, it would have been of help. And I cannot trace ''the project I posted about before'', that he mentions.

I'm sorry I should have been more clear before, I working on a "modification" for medieval grand strategy game Crusader Kings 2. The developers included a feature which changes the name of game's "provinces," duchies, kingdoms and empires depending on who controls them, but they didn't make use of it much. I started by going through Wikipedia articles for alternate names that existed in the real world in places such as the border between Italy and German speaking countries or the alternate names for famous/important cities such as Florence. After I ran out of historical names I began to think about how France, Italy and Spain in the pasted changed Occitan, Catalan, Portuguese etc to conform with the dominate standard. So what if, as is possible in the game, Italians ruled over parts of France, or Asturias/Leon/Castile/Spain never lost control of Portugal, place names would be different. So I've been using the reference books that Nino83 and others recommended to me to transform place names between romance languages, Such as Latium in the in the linked thread.

 

[Cenzontle]

How about the loss of an unstressed, word-internal vowel adjacent to the stressed syllable (syncope)?
I know it applies to Spanish and Portuguese, and probably to other Western Romance languages.
Sp. "Mordaña" (or "Mortaña" if the syncope happened prior to the voicing change).

 

[Gavril]

Sp. "Mordaña" (or "Mortaña" if the syncope happened prior to the voicing change).

The -g- in the suffix -azgo (hallazgo, etc.), from Lat. -āticum, suggests that the -t- would already have become -d- by the time the vowel contracted.

 

[Cenzontle]

You are probably right, Gavril, about the relative chronology of the voicing and syncope changes. I was thinking of Menéndez Pidal's statement (Manual, Sec. 24) "Ya en latín vulgar se perdía la protónica después de r", with the example of *cerbellaria (for cerebellare).

Penny (Sec. 2.4.3.3) says "In certain environments (contact with /r/ or /l/,...), intertonics were frequently lost in VL."

Lathrop (Sec. 9b) cites as (post-tonic) examples ar(i)dus, sol(i)dus, and vir(i)dis, already syncopated in Vulgar Latin.

But a recent dissertation (by Eric Adler Lief, 2006, starting on p. 177) claims that examples such as anhelitāre > OSp. alentar, sōlitāriu > soltero, and offer(i)ta > oferta are due to analogy rather than sound change. Lief concludes (p. 180) "the only clear cases of syncope predating voicing are ones with /sVt/ like positu."

So... "Mordaña".

 

[killerbee256]

You are probably right, Gavril, about the relative chronology of the voicing and syncope changes. I was thinking of Menéndez Pidal's statement (Manual, Sec. 24) "Ya en latín vulgar se perdía la protónica después de r", with the example of *cerbellaria (for cerebellare).

Penny (Sec. 2.4.3.3) says "In certain environments (contact with /r/ or /l/,...), intertonics were frequently lost in VL."

Lathrop (Sec. 9b) cites as (post-tonic) examples ar(i)dus, sol(i)dus, and vir(i)dis, already syncopated in Vulgar Latin.

But a recent dissertation (by Eric Adler Lief, 2006, starting on p. 177) claims that examples such as anhelitāre > OSp. alentar, sōlitāriu > soltero, and offer(i)ta > oferta are due to analogy rather than sound change. Lief concludes (p. 180) "the only clear cases of syncope predating voicing are ones with /sVt/ like positu."

So... "Mordaña".

I've was just thinking this same thing, it seems like the vowel would have been lost quite early before the divergence into separate languages. Which leads me to these forms:
french = Mordagne
italian = Mortagna
occitan = Mordanha
castillan Mordaña
catalan = Mordanya
portuguese = Mourdanha
visigothic = Mordanna

 

[Cenzontle]

I'm having misgivings about the term Visigothic. Maybe a better term would be Proto-Ibero-Romance.
Isn't Visigothic the name of an actual Germanic language?

 

[jazyk]

portuguese = Mourdanha - I have never seen such a configuration in Portuguese words.

 

[Nino83]

I know it applies to Spanish and Portuguese, and probably to other Western Romance languages.

Youre right, Cenzontle. This happens in Italian too.

The -g- in the suffix -azgo (hallazgo, etc.), from Lat. -āticum, suggests that the -t- would already have become -d- by the time the vowel contracted.

Right.
In Italian (where the sonorization of the intervocalic consonants didn't happen, south of Rome, and happened in half of the caes in the Tuscan variant) it seems, in some cases, it is due to the fact that the "r" sonorized the following consonant, like in verecundia > vergogna, so Mordagna could be possible in Italian too.

 

[killerbee256]

I'm having misgivings about the term Visigothic. Maybe a better term would be Proto-Ibero-Romance.
Isn't Visigothic the name of an actual Germanic language?

The term is not mine rather it's the game's, which is used in it's code. It's been a annoyance the among the game's more linguistic orientated fans, so you aren't alone. The developer's logic is that the Visigoth kingdom only fell 49 years previous to the earliest start date. So Visigothic in this context is suppose to refer to the culture of Visigothic Spain not the Germanic Gothic subgroup. To give context I've attached pictures from the game.

portuguese = Mourdanha - I have never seen such a configuration in Portuguese words.

Is Mordanha better?

 

[jazyk]

Yes, Mordanha is much better　than Mourdanha. In a word like *Mourdanha, there would be a hiatus (mo-ur-da-nha), not a diphthong (mour-da-nha).

 

[Sardokan1.0]

I think in Italian would be Mauritania (like the actual nation of Mauritania)

In Sardinian I'm pretty sure it would be Maurredania, since in Sardinian language we still have a nickname we use for south-west Sardinians, we call them Maurreddinos, because in Vth century when Sardinia was conquered by Vandals, they brought to south-west Sardinia thousands of slaves from the former Roman province of Mauretania, whose inhabitants were called Mauri - Mauros (Moors), diminutive : Maurellinos -> in Sardinian : Maurreddinos

 

[Cenzontle]

I also wondered about the ou diphthong in an unstressed syllable, but we do have ousado, outono, outorgar, outubro, ouvir.
But in all these examples the diphthong is in an open syllable (followed by a single consonant, not a cluster like -rd-).
So... Does Portuguese allow the sequence -ourd-?
I searched for "*ourd*" in Prof. Davies's Corpus do Português and found mostly derivatives of "Lourdes"; no clearly native words.
So maybe we do have to reduce the diphthong to -o-.

 

[jazyk]

Does Portuguese allow the sequence -ourd-?

I can't think of any such word. That's why I rejected it in post 17.

So maybe we do have to reduce the diphthong to -o-.

Right.

 

[Cossue]

As the hypothetical result of Mauritania I would expect in my own Galician either *Mordaña, or a more conservative *Mouredaña, but probably no *Mourdaña (the reduction -or- < -our- < -aur- is usual just in the coda). Actually, there are several place names in Galicia which show both these posibilities:

Morgade < 943 AD Mauregati < *villa *Maurigati 'villa of Maurigatus/Mauricatus'
Vilamor < 1165 Villa Mour < 976 Villa Mauri 'villa of Maurus'​

But

Mourigade < *villa *Mauricati
Vilamoure < 964 villa Mauri​

Also, for example:

Parderrubias < 957 Parietes Rubias​

So, first it happened the lenition of stops, them the vowel reduction. In any case, -au- was preserved in Western Iberia, then transformed in -ou-, then reduced to -o- in Castilian but (mostly) preserved in Galician and Portuguese.