Portuguese and Greek coincidences

[S.V.]

Hello. Unprompted, do you know of any similarities for Greek and Portuguese? Or elsewhere in Romance. Thank you! Gracias.

I saw a mention of 'inflected' infinitives in Romeyka Greek (as in Portugal, Sardinia and once in S. Italy1).

Of course, articles before names, and a few more. Those seem more 'contagious' or random than syntax. For Latin allowing 'both' orders, A. Greek seems to have "preferred"238 enclisis (pronouns after conjugated verbs, like Romeyka Eðotʃen-eme 'gave me' (p. 141); very common in European Portuguese or OSardinian). Also elsewhere in Romance. If some are not coincidences, one may talk of the centuries of contact with Greek, for the branch with cara κάρα 'face', before the ports near Naples are overtaken by Portus.

(P)

 

[Awwal12]

Of course, articles before names

...In most modern European languages to the west of Elba. Curiously, in the Balkan Sprachbund the articles, while apparently induced by Greek, are postfixes.
You need to seek for specific similarities that are unlikely to be accidental. And if you're trying to connect them with some historical facts, the attested history of those features also becomes very much relevant.

 

[S.V.]

You need to seek for specific similarities that are unlikely to be accidental

Hello, Awwal, I agree. 'Conservative' works for Portuguese, OSardinian and Romeyka, so it seemed to me, either it's with them a connection can be made, or it does not 'exist.' Part of the issue seems to be a 'fragmentary' state, after old layers are replaced. A good example in that thread for the perfect in Romance (people can imagine I am become death ~ I have...). After that elevated style (instead of popular, rustic, etc.) you likely have one reason S. Italy and Portuguese were 'conservative' of the simple past (same once for eastern Spain, now most of LatAm).

But Greek also got ˚have for 'grip' - 'have' - 'have (done)'. So good luck factoring that into the 'Galton board'.

in the Balkan Sprachbund the articles, while apparently induced by Greek

Trying to find more on this (also O João, 'the John'?), I instead found a "southern and south-western Macedonian... DOM... similar to the Spanish a" (Bužarovska 2020). DOM was also a big difference in S. Italy and OSardinian. The Sabellic langs. being 'older' cousins of Latin seem to be excluded, as an influence. If a few other things go through, I return to one line, "Greeks [] were confident in their linguistic and cultural superiority and remained uninterested in learning Latin for several centuries after the Roman conquest" (Dickey 2016). As in the Basque fishing boats, one imagines the Greek spirit, two millennia ago. Cara κάρα winning easily.

Instead of a discussion on the mass slavery system. The OSard. texts are also a window into a descendant, with fights over slaves.

 

[Penyafort]

In Catalan, except for the southwestern varieties, the use of the article before a name is common usage and, unlike in other languages, not regarded as dialectal, colloquial or rural.

The Portuguese O João e a Lúcia would be here El Joan (or en Joan) i la Llúcia (or na Llúcia, in Majorca), en and na even being called 'personal articles'.

I'm not an expert on Portuguese history but I can't recall them being in direct contact with the Greeks. We Catalans did for a while (Duchy of Athens) and so did other Romance speakers, like France but mainly the Republic of Venice (remember Spanish painter El Greco, who was Cretan Greek by ethnicity but Venetian by nationality).

 

[S.V.]

direct contact with the Greeks

Hola, Penya. With the map from above, or that one, one would mean a 'line' from those ports in #1 to Sardinia and a 'core' of 'Luso' Latin. This is before that "Ostia... 54 AD... 106 AD" movement. In terms of Spanish (we are used to talking about Seville, etc. for LatAm Spanish), we can think of an odd scenario in which Seville is replaced half-way in the process, and we get a mess.

At least that is my understanding. It may be boring after they have genetic data. For the previous scenario, for ex. the inflected infinitive from Bari709 occurs around that "1246... sacked and razed... subsequently destroyed several times... recovered each time." But the issue is why 'Byzantine' zones, Sardinia and Portugal once shared X.

This doesn't have to mean the core of 'Castilian' once shared X and everything else, though they share a base querere ˈwantˈ, mactar ˈkillˈ, patres ˈparentsˈ, cuios ˈwhoseˈ, cara ˈfaceˈ, iliaris ˈsidesˈ etc. (but além, ainda, serem). Regarding Catalan specifically, those articles may have survived the 711 shock (as you have said for other forms, I remember).

 

[Awwal12]

In Catalan, except for the southwestern varieties, the use of the article before a name

Ah, it has just occured to me that it was 'name' like in 'proper name', not 'grammatical name' (nomen). Sorry for the confusion, sometimes the Russian grammatical terminology interferes.

 

[bearded]

'name' like in 'proper name', not 'grammatical name' (nomen)

I think that the latter is usually called 'noun' in English.

 

[Awwal12]

I think that the latter is usually called 'noun' in English.

Except in the traditional Latin grammar it also included what we call adjectives. Since in IE languages nouns and adjectives do tend to express certain moprphological and syntactical similarities, having a common term for them is sometimes convenient. (In Russian traditional grammar, which simply calques most Latin terms, the full name for a noun is 'имя существительное', i.e. ~'name substantial', and for an adjective it's 'имя прилагательное', i.e. ~'name attachable', though typically the first part is truncated).

 

[bearded]

i.e. ~'name substantial

In English there is also 'substantive'.

 

[Awwal12]

In English there is also 'substantive'.

Yes, but the term 'noun substantive' is pretty much outdated in English - those parts of speech are referred simply as 'nouns' now (though the term 'nominal' has appeared as a response to that).

 

[Red Arrow]

In Flanders, we add articles before male names.

Except in the traditional Latin grammar it also included what we call adjectives. Since in IE languages nouns and adjectives do tend to express certain moprphological and syntactical similarities, having a common term for them is sometimes convenient. (In Russian traditional grammar, which simply calques most Latin terms, the full name for a noun is 'имя существительное', i.e. ~'name substantial', and for an adjective it's 'имя прилагательное', i.e. ~'name attachable', though typically the first part is truncated).

Same in Dutch:
adjective - bijvoeglijk naamwoord (addable name word)
noun - zelfstandig naamwoord (self standing name word)

 

[Awwal12]

As far as personal names are concerned, north-eastern Russian dialects attach their definite suffixes to personal names as well, so it's doesn't seem entirely uncommon typologically.

 

[S.V.]

Flanders

Thank you, all! I also saw Czech in that João link (first comment). I don't envy the guy who brings up that map.

(Quora)

For 'contagious and random', it seems Catalan, 'rural' Occitan, and Sardinian (Lai) share a stress shift in clitics, with S. Italy.

I see a mention for Romeyka (Armostis et al.; under Stress):

Pontic Greek allows stress to fall beyond the third syllable from the end either due to inflectional endings or because of clitics that get attached on the stem, e.g. [ekaˈlat͡ʃevanemaˌsen] ‘they were talking to us’, [ˈestilanemaˌsen] ‘they sent us’, [ˈiðaˌnatune] ‘they saw him’. In these cases there is a secondary stress on the first or third syllable from the end (see Kontosopoulos 2008: 15).​

This seems to 'resolve' that end weight, which Cast. once shared with Sardinian (a high frequency of clusters to the right): téngoselo preparao (Alcalde, Escenas cántabras 1928; selo 'it +DAT', I have it prepared for you); e tiénengelo delant e diérongelo privado (Mio Cid [EN above ? icon, 'gave it to him']); cf. Sard. nois comporaimuslila e deimusindeli I boe domatu (180, 'bought it from him and ɪɴᴅᴇ gave him...')

 

[S.V.]

'inflected' infinitives in Romeyka Greek (as in Portugal, Sardinia and once in S. Italy1)

Also there "neither the plain, the inflected nor the personal infinitive in Romeyka can be explained by contact with Turkish" (Sitaridou, p. 55). Next to the examples in Rohlfs (per potereno, per posseremo, essereno: Gram. stor. iii, § 709), the one in Sardinia also seems to exclude other influences (de no las creder, o malas esserent, o bonas, CSPS a. 1147; line 9).

There's a bit of Greek in Portuguese. Feliz Dia de Portugal.

Perhaps proven with some fragile U3 changes (NIH: Supplemental Materials, Fig. S11, p. 85; "Greek... H, V, and U3" in Sicily). Instead of modern Greek, one may think of old folks speaking Tsakonika or Romeyka (also "not-Slavic," but relics), for the centuries of contact in S. Italy. A similar line for mənínnə, minninnu, menino. This may imply a 'mirror' of Argentina, before and after migrations, in which later 'soldier' Latin replaces some of the κάρα layer, for 'Spanish.' But a direct 'line' for Portuguese.

(Valenzuela 2021)

 

[Perseas]

Curiously, in the Balkan Sprachbund the articles, while apparently induced by Greek, are postfixes.

Maybe my English has become rusty, but what does "induced" mean here?
In addition, in Greek the article is used before the noun.

Pontic Greek allows stress to fall beyond the third syllable from the end

The same occurs in some contemporary modern Greek dialects, especially in Northern Greece (perhaps also in others).
That is, the law of limitation of the accent is violated and the accent may fall on the fourth syllable from the end.
For example: έφαγάμαν ['efaɣˌaman] (=we ate); you can also see the secondary stress on the penult. In standard Greek it's φάγαμε ['faɣame].

 

[Awwal12]

Maybe my English has become rusty, but what does "induced" mean here?

Introduced as morphosyntactical calques, basically.

In addition, in Greek the article is used before the noun.

Yes, but not in Romanian or Bulgarian.

 

[Perseas]

Introduced as morphosyntactical calques, basically.

Yes, but not in Romanian or Bulgarian.

In other words, is the presence of articles in these languages due to the influence of Greek?

 

[Awwal12]

In other words, is the presence of articles in these languages due to the influence of Greek?

Directly or indirectly, but that seems likely. Of course, it was a part of more general areal processes (most notably, analytization).

 

[Olaszinhok]

In Catalan, except for the southwestern varieties, the use of the article before a name is common usage and, unlike in other languages, not regarded as dialectal, colloquial or rural.

In Tuscan and Northern Italian the use of the article before a feminine name is pretty common. However, it sounds weird in Standard Italian.

 

[S.V.]

Macedonian... DOM

Apparently also has the clitic doubling (p. 102, Chidambaram 2013) common in S. Italy and Sardinia. Old examples from Iberia (todoslos fazian vijr; tots los feien morir: p. 66, Riiho 1988) were more frequent in OCastilian texts (p. 57; this was linked by Riiho to the DOM a, also less frequent in Port. or Cat.) Common in OSardinian: [ᴇɴ] iudike Gosantine nos lu aveat datu a nnois104; progitteu mi lu levas a Plave et a Petru?341; et a mmimi torrarunmindelu209. Apparently also "common" in Greek (3; Mu to arostisan to peδi3.95 'me lo enfermaron al niño'; cf. Cappadocian Greek eme dinis to mi to ciraq?12)

It seems minninnu in Sardinia survived near that Olbia dot in the north, while the 'non-Portuguese' examples above are near Porto Torres, 'the first Roman colony in Sardinia'1 (c. 46 BC, soon after the Gallic Wars), closer to that blue "restricted" zone:

(p. 36, ORBIS)
Not 'everything is Greek', but for a 'natural' contrast between N. and S. Italy, preserved in an island, or 'fragmented' in other arteries, it seems a 'Greek influence' can explain those dots around Naples & some colonies once sharing Α, Β (not Γ ).

 

[S.V.]

After a claim VSO in OCast. was because of Arabic (ex.), it seems "Old Sardinian was [] a VSO language [Lombardi 2007]" (p. 8) agrees with the same "availability" in later Greek1, Romanian, or old Neapolitan (p. 136; p. 59 "SVO/VSO and DOM").

Rom. Vor　 unii... zică (37); 　intîi　au　proftit　craiul　　pe Alexandru vodă (1c)
　　　want　 some　 say　　　　　first　has　invited　prince.the　ᴅᴏᴍ Alexandru　king

Port. Bem disse o Pedro　que era verdade (27)
　　 　 well　 said　the Pedro　that　was　true

MGreek ðʝávase éna peðí to ‘paramíθi (44); 　Episkevase o Janis　 ton ipoloʝisti mu (3)
　　　　　read 　　a 　child　the　fairy.tale　　　　　repaired　the　Janis　the computer mine

Cf. p. 207 "VSO and SVO... neutral word orders in PhG [Pharasiot Greek]" (Bağrıaçık 2018);
p. 183 "Spanish... a mixed SVO/VSO order (Neumann-Holzschuh 1998)" & "Italian... lacks VSO"2

OSard. has a natural V-S even when it records people's words (mi la levait su servu tuo319, Ca levasti tu a natia tua341), so "conservative" for OCast. should agree with the larger picture, even if the oxalá generations helped.

Cf. "In Plautus the verb is often followed by other constituents, whereas Caesar, the ‘fanatic of the final position’, has the verb at the end in 84 per cent of sentences" (Pinkster, 23.49); Teneo ego huic oculum (Plautus), Odi ego homines ignava opera et philosopha sententia (Pacuvius), qando - ponebamus tegila (Amica). And compare "a typological shift from SOV to SVO" in late Etruscan3 (around those cities on p. 22, "famed for their wealth"15) with creole SVO.

 

[S.V.]

There seem to be a few translations like

"When you see the stone in the mouth of the uterus, if it is not caught by a hip and it is willing to follow, this is the best situation of all."1 (Hippocrates, De Mul. 3.244: καὶ ἐθέλῃ ἐπακολουθῆσαι)​

​

"If with this treatment the uterus is willing to go back in, fine"2 (Hipp. De Mul. 3.248: ἐθέλωσιν ἰέναι)​

Akin to o estomago não quer deixar entrar3 'the stomach doesn't want to let it in', a mancha não quer sair4 'the stain doesn't want to go out'. For that ἐθέλω in S. Italy, "me tèli ‘mi ami?’, se telo ‘ti amo’ ['I love you']" in Rohlfs, Lex. Graec., p. 136, next to 'I want to sleep', 'I want to know', etc. So 3/3 for Portuguese, while fragments of querer in Old Occitan seem to agree with fragments in Latin authors: Deciperis, vane, qui Manes queris orare (Commodian, 'you are deceived, who want to pray the Manes'). Oc. also had fragments of cara 'face' or cada 'each' (caratge, cadun), while < voleo seems dominant in Old Occitan.

Pt. matar 'kill' also showing fragments in Old Occitan, a link for Pt. tenho, Oc. tenh (< teneo), or Majorca's faç, OSard. fatho, faço 'I do', along maternal U3, this may belong to an 'old' layer, before tengo, etc. Then θύω ‘sacrifice’, ‘slay, kill’ → ma(c)tare ‘sacrifice’, ___?

Et ibunt illi tres Caesares resistere contra: Quos ille mactatos uolucribus donat in escam (Commodian)​

"And to oppose him shall three caesars go forth; whom having slain he gives as food to the birds"5 A​

A note for a 'popular solecism' also shows a 'Portuguese' pattern: si deus esset, utique non furto uiuebat (Commodian; cf. Cic.). A similar note for si illum deuoraset... quis pluebat (63 'African Hellenism'). The key may be 'sporadic' in poets, and 'fully productive' in Commodian, Ammianus, etc. A 13th c. example for sse vos prazia (p. 251, rare?). Also 'on both sides' in S. Italy (§ 748, Rohlfs, Lex. Graec.). For a 'Greek' macar on p. 256, again it seems 'fragmentary' around Old Occitan.6 So once more on p. 328, Iribarren 1995, '-orr-, -urr- in Sard.', '-urr- in Sicilian', 'very scarce in Oc.', 'this can be explained by Romanization... after 154 AD'(?), cf. vikturra ~ victoria.