# Latin accusative in Asturian masculine singular



## purasbabosadas

I've noticed that in Asturian(and also in other romance languages like Sicilian and Corsican) The masculine singular ends in -u(osu,llobu) instead of -o like in Spanish(oso,lobo) and Italian(orso,lupo).Does this final -u descend directly from a vulgar latin accusative form(ursu,lupu)?


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## bearded

Hi
Yes, it does, as far as I know (the -m accusative ending was first not pronounced in Latin, then it disappeared in any Romance writing). The remaining -u was variously transformed in Romance languages (mostly -e in French, when not vanished), and remained unchanged in the more conservative ones.
Please amend your thread title (AustrianAsturian).


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## Sardokan1.0

purasbabosadas said:


> Does this final -u descend directly from a vulgar latin accusative form(ursu,lupu)?



Yes, it's directly from vulgar latin accusative, remains unchanged in the more conservative Romance languages (Sardinian is the most conservative of the family).

Latin - Sardinian

_ursum - ursu
lupum - lupu
bonum - bonu
malum - malu (bad)
foedum - feu (ugly)
caseum - casu (cheese)
canum - canu (white haired)
nigellum - nigheddu, nieddu (black)
castrum (fortress, castle) - crastu (rock, boulder)_

etc.etc.


P.S.
There are few exceptions in Sardinian where the final -S of nominative is still present, I can remember only "Tempus and Corpus"


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## berndf

The Italian and Spanish -o also descends from the Latin accusative:
-ʊm > - ʊ̃ (muting of final m with nasalization of preceding vowel in Classical Latin) > -ʊ (de-nasalization in Vulgar Latin) > -o (ŭ/о̄ merger in Vulgar Latin).

The 2nd and 3rd steps are not necessarily separate and not necessarily in that sequence but should be regarded as distinct shifts.

The difference to those languages with modern ending -u is just the outcome of the ŭ/о̄ merger.


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## fdb

Sardokan1.0 said:


> There are few exceptions in Sardinian where the final -S of nominative is still present, I can remember only "Tempus and Corpus"



In the case of Latin tempus and corpus the final -s is not the ending for the nom. sing.; it is part of the stem of these neuter nouns.


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## bearded

fdb said:


> In the case of Latin tempus and corpus the final -s is not the ending for the nom. sing.; it is part of the stem of these neuter nouns.


How come that in Italian the final -o ending exists also in these words, as if they originally had an -um accusative like masculine words?  Why didn't Italian preserve the s that was part of the stem and also present in the accusative? Just for analogy with masculine nouns..?
As a matter of fact, I can see that no Italian nouns end in -s.


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## berndf

Regularization of endings?


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## fdb

The neuter nouns were (mostly) reclassified as masculine. So tempus n. > tempus m. > acc. tempu(m) > Italian tempo.


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## Sardokan1.0

fdb said:


> In the case of Latin tempus and corpus the final -s is not the ending for the nom. sing.; it is part of the stem of these neuter nouns.



Thanks, I just cheched, apparently the accusative of Tempus is Tempus (not Tempum), this makes more sense, since most of Sardinian nouns come from accusative.

DIZIONARIO LATINO OLIVETTI - Declinatore/Coniugatore Latino


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## berndf

Yes, those are 3rd declension nouns and in 3rd declension accusative and nominative endings are the same.



fdb said:


> reclassified as masculine


...and as 2nd declension.


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## bearded

berndf said:


> in 3rd declension accusative and nominative endings are the same.


You certainly mean ''as concerns neuter nouns''. In masculine/feminine nouns they are different (e.g. nom. ordo, acc. ordinem).
On the other hand, also in the 2nd declension nominative and accusative endings of neuter nouns are the same (e.g. vinum, both nom. and acc.).


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## berndf

bearded said:


> You certainly mean ''as concerns neuter nouns''.


Of course, yes. For m/f nouns this is only true in plural.


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## Cenzontle

So, purasbabosadas, has your question been answered?
By "descend *directly*", I wonder if you meant to ask if the modern sound is an unbroken continuation of the Latin "-u(m)"
_without passing through a stage of [ o ] and "returning" to an [ u ] sound_.
This latter process seems to be the case for Portuguese, where the spelling "lobo" is pronounced [lobu].
I would guess that the final vowel was [ o ] at the time when the spelling was being established,
and that the change ("return") to [ u ] was a later development.  (Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken.)


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## Dymn

I wouldn't be so sure to claim it has evolved directly. For example Portuguese and Central Catalan also have final /u/ but it doesn't come directly from Latin, it's a regular vowel reduction phenomenon that also occurs in the middle of the word. In Astur-Leonese, this vowel raising can also occur with _-e_ in some varieties, when the Latin etymon had mostly _-em _in the accusative. I suppose the lowering of short _i _and _u_ was completed quite early in most of Romance, with the exception of Sardinian and Romanian if I recall correctly.

It's also worth remembering that in Central Asturian there's an adjectival form called "neutro de materia" which takes _-o _instead of _-u_ with uncountable nouns, so both vowels are shown in opposition. I don't know how it came to be.


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## merquiades

Cenzontle said:


> So, purasbabosadas, has your question been answered?
> By "descend *directly*", I wonder if you meant to ask if the modern sound is an unbroken continuation of the Latin "-u(m)"
> _without passing through a stage of [ o ] and "returning" to an [ u ] sound_.
> This latter process seems to be the case for Portuguese, where the spelling "lobo" is pronounced [lobu].
> I would guess that the final vowel was [ o ] at the time when the spelling was being established,
> and that the change ("return") to [ u ] was a later development.  (Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken.)


Well, Galician, the parent language of Portuguese, has -[o] at the end of words as well as --[e] and -[a], both spoken and written, so I assume the weakening of unstressed [o] to /u] and [a] to [ɐ] and [e] to [ə] must have occurred in Portugal after the 15th century.
Corsican is related to Tuscan which also has final -[o].  So the change to /u] also must have occurred in recent times,
I would deduce from this that final - in most or all the western languages must not evolve directly from Latin -[um] and must have had the intermediate stage of -[o]

It's interesting to note that Latin accusative was -um in the singular but -os in the plural:  _amicus_ was _amicum_ (acc. sing) and _amicos_ (acc. plur).  I'm not sure if this is significant and could have played any role in development of the final vowel in Romance languages.


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## Dymn

merquiades said:


> Well, Galician, the parent language of Portuguese, has [o] at the end of words as well as [e] and [a], both spoken and written, so I assume the weakening of [o] to [a] to [ɐ] and [e] to [ə] must have occurred in Portugal after the 15th century.


Genuine Galician pronunciation -not the one you can hear on TVG- slightly raises post-tonic /a e o/ to [ɐ ɪ ʊ] respectively.


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## berndf

merquiades said:


> So the change to /u] also must have occurred in recent times,


Why?


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## merquiades

@Dymn  So you mean that Galician post-tonic vowels were raised just like in Portuguese, but at a later time these vowels were corrected, at least in standard speech, due to orthography?

@berndf  From what I understand Tuscan and Corsican are the same language, or rather Tuscan was transmitted to Corsica.   If Tuscan has clear -o and has always had it, where as modern Corsican has -u, the latter has had to change, right?  The only other possibility would be that Tuscan and Corsican both had -u in origin and -o is a modern phenomenon in Tuscan.  This would seem improbable since final u wasn't written or is not written in Tuscan or Italian.


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## berndf

Or it is a substratum effect. The language replaced by the modern Tuscan-based Corsican was probably closely related to Sardinian.


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## Sardokan1.0

merquiades said:


> @Dymn  So you mean that Galician post-tonic vowels were raised just like in Portuguese, but at a later time these vowels were corrected, at least in standard speech, due to orthography?
> 
> @berndf  From what I understand Tuscan and Corsican are the same language, or rather Tuscan was transmitted to Corsica.   If Tuscan has clear -o and has always had it, where as modern Corsican has -u, the latter has had to change, right?  The only other possibility would be that Tuscan and Corsican both had -u in origin and -o is a modern phenomenon in Tuscan.  This would seem improbable since final u wasn't written or is not written in Tuscan or Italian.



Corsican and Tuscan are not the same language. The influence of Tuscan on Corsican dates back to the Middle Ages, but before that in Corsica it was spoken the same dialect of Vulgar Latin spoken in Sardinia (Insular Latin). Corsican still keeps most of the Insular vocabulary which is not present in Tuscan or Italian, but it's shared only with Sardinian. So the -U in Corsican is not a recent thing, but it's the same conservative phenomenon typical also of Sardinian language. Let's say that if Corsica hadn't been colonized by Pisa, they would have developed a language more similar to Sardinian than Italian.

some examples of Insular vocabulary present in Corsican and Sardinian, and not in Italian.

Corsican - Sardinian - Italian



Spoiler



_tandu - tando - allora (then)
pesà - pesare - alzarsi (to stand up, to raise)
intende - intendere - sentire (to hear)
furà - furare - rubare (to steal)
falà - falare - scendere (also synonymous of "cadere")
u corciu - su cortzu - il poveretto, la buonanima (the poor man, the dearly departed)
casgiu - casu - formaggio
brocciu - brotzu - ricotta
zìnzala - zìnzula (pronounce TZ) - zanzara (mosquito)
mezzanu - mezzanu (pronounce TZ) - scadente, di bassa qualità, sciupato (of poor quality, damaged, wasted away)
ghjàcaru - jàgaru - cane da caccia (hunting dog)
muccighìle - mutzighìle - muso (muzzle, snout)
aiò - ajò - andiamo (let's go)
iè - èja, ei - si (yes)_


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## Cossue

Dymn said:


> Genuine Galician pronunciation -not the one you can hear on TVG- slightly raises post-tonic /a e o/ to [ɐ ɪ ʊ] respectively.



This. In fact, there is a dictionary of recomended or standard pronunciation of the language (_Dicionario de pronuncia da lingua galega_: "Este dicionario ten a finalidade de ofrecer un modelo de pronuncia da lingua galega, na súa variedade estándar, nun rexistro formal e cun ritmo normal de fala" = "This dictionary [...] offers a model for the pronunciation of the  standard variety of the Galician language, in a formal register [...]) which represents these sounds ([ɐ ɪ ʊ]) as [a̝ e̝ o̝] "because this dictionary is directed to the general public". Currently, urban speakers tend to pronounce them just like in Spanish, but rural speakers usually maintain the authoctonous sounds.

Actually, a number of 13th century Galician documents (when they were still testing the spelling of the language) used <i> and <u> for [ɪ] and [ʊ].

As for Asturian, at least some medieval documents (see, for example, _https://dialnet.unirioja.es/descarga/articulo/211328.pdf __) _use -<o> instead of -<u>, so maybe this is a recent development?


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## Sardokan1.0

bearded said:


> Sardinians (no offense meant) have a tendency to present their language as completely different from Italian, in order to state that it is an independent language and not an Italian dialect. Sardinians are right: theirs _is _an independent language, but in reality it has a bit more in common with Italian than they would like us to believe.



Perhaps viewing Sardinian language from outside without a full knowledge of it you could think that it has a bit more in common with Italian, this can be in part true for some loanwords, but the number of differences is also huge.

Here is some examples Latin archaisms present in Sardinian



Spoiler



*Latin - Sardinian - Italian*
domus - domo - casa
magnus - mannu - grande
cito - chito - presto
cras - cras - domani
vervecem - berbéche , bervéghe - pecora
juba - jua - criniera di cavallo
etiam - eja - si, certamente
cupa - cupa, cuba - botte, barile
ilicem - èliche, èlighe - leccio
filicem - fìliche fìlighe - felce
apium - appiu - sedano
hominem - homine - uomo
in hoc loco, in hoc, in hoce - in hoche, in hoghe - qui, di qua
hoc annus - hoc annu - quest'anno




<Reply to deleted post removed>


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## Dymn

Cossue said:


> Currently, urban speakers tend to pronounce them just like in Spanish, but rural speakers usually maintain the authoctonous sounds.


What about the open-close vowel distinction? I think I've heard some TVG journalists who don't even make it. Are those journalists always native anyway?


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## Cossue

Dymn said:


> What about the open-close vowel distinction? I think I've heard some TVG journalists who don't even make it. Are those journalists always native anyway?



Probably for a large number of workers of TVG (Galician public TV), even being Galicians, the relation with the Galician language is strictly professional... Certainly the "Galego da TVG" (_TVG Galician_) is already an old joke* for a Galician speaked with Spanish accent and phonetics which made people, back then, want to pull off their ears; but currently it is becoming something like another register of the language. And , yes, many urban occasional speakers have difficulties with open and close vowels.

Anyway, since there are many excellent voice actors in Galicia, everyone knows that Harrison Ford speaks an excellent Galician, much better than most news presenters. 

* TVG is 30+ year old already, which is odd since I'm just... oh my, I'm getting old, 46.


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## purasbabosadas

Cenzontle said:


> So, purasbabosadas, has your question been answered?
> By "descend *directly*", I wonder if you meant to ask if the modern sound is an unbroken continuation of the Latin "-u(m)"
> _without passing through a stage of [ o ] and "returning" to an [ u ] sound_.
> This latter process seems to be the case for Portuguese, where the spelling "lobo" is pronounced [lobu].
> I would guess that the final vowel was [ o ] at the time when the spelling was being established,
> and that the change ("return") to [ u ] was a later development.  (Someone please correct me if I'm mistaken.)



Yes,I'm asking if the final -u in vulgar latin remained unchanged in Asturian(as a -u)


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## Quiviscumque

Gª de Diego, Manual de Dialectología Española 3ª es, 1978, p. 146-147:
Meyer-Lübke y Carnoy creen que el asturiano conserva, como el longodoriano, la distinción de _u_ y _ŏ_ finales; pero parece innegable que la _u_ átona, especialmente la final, del gallego y del asturiano es secundaria de una _o_ original. El asturiano no solo hace fecuentemente _u_ en los casos de _u_ original, _pequenu, queremus, toparun_, sino en los de _o_ etimológica, _nenus, comiendu_, y en posición átona no final, _churaba_.

p. 152:
La vocal átona _o_ se oscurece frecuentemente hasta _u_ en cualquier posición, sobre todo entre los vaqueiros: _churaba_ 'lloraba', _dulurcín_ 'dolorcito', _cun quesu blandu_, 'con queso blando', _nun valenun_ 'no valieron', [...]

Edit:
NGLE, Fonética y Fonología, 3.7j (p. 110):
Es común a un gran número de variedades del español el cierre, ascenso o elevación de las vocales medias átonas finales. Este fenómeno está vinculado casi siempre al carácter rural de los hablantes [...] se registra en el norte y en el occidente de España [...] se puede documentar en Asturias, en Cantabria, en el castellano de los hablantes gallegos, en León, zonas de Salamanca, Cáceres y Canarias, así como en judeoespañol. También había cierre de _-o_ final en los hablantes de origen canario de Luisiana.


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