# Why in French did nasalization block "uò" and not "jè"?



## Nino83

Hello everyone. 

I'd like to ask you why in French, nasalization blocked the formation of the diphthong "uò" and not that of the diphthong "jè"? 

For example: 
"il vient" (viene), "il tient" (tiene), "bien" (bene) but "bon" (buono), "son" (suono). 

It seems that in Old French there were alternative spellings such as "buen" and "suen". 

N.B. 
In Italian there is "bene" instead of "biene".


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## ahvalj

Bourciez (Éléments de linguistique romane) suggests that _bon_ etc. continue proclitic forms.


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## Nino83

And what about "son" (sound)?


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## ahvalj

Nino83 said:


> And what about "son" (sound)?


_"La forme son suppose une réfection d'apr. le lat. ou d'apr. soner (sonner*)"_ (http://www.cnrtl.fr/etymologie/son — second inset)

By the way, here is the excerpt from Bourciez in Google Books: http://books.google.ru/books?hl=ru&id=uVtfAAAAMAAJ&focus=searchwithinvolume&q=bon (p. 287).


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## ahvalj

A couple of other examples of leveled/borrowed _o_ I was able to find:

_vol_ (Sp. _vuelo_)
_dol_ (Sp. _duelo_, It. _duolo_)
_sol_ (Sp. _suelo_, It. _suolo_)


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## Nino83

Thank you, ahvalj. 
There are very few words with the VL open "o" before nasals in open syllables.


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## Riverplatense

I'm not sure whether or not this fits well here, but I have been wondering about the word _épouser_, derived from Latin SPONSARE. Is this one of the few cases in which the galloromanic diphthongation (stressed [o] in open syllable → [ow]), with following monophthongation to  took place despite a following nasal? I can't find a satisfying explanation for this form, the more so as diphthongation in this case seems to affect an unstressed vowel.


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## CapnPrep

Nino83 said:


> I'd like to ask you why in French, nasalization blocked the formation of the diphthong "uò" and not that of the diphthong "jè"?


The standard position is that _ŏ_[_n_ did undergo diphthongization, as the OFr forms indicate. And taken individually, the explanations about _bon_ (and _om_) being proclitic, the noun _son_ being modeled on end-stressed forms of the verb _sonner_, nominative _cuens_ being replaced by accusative _comte_, all of these are perfectly plausible. But it is curious that every single occurrence of _uon_/_uen_ seems eventually to have been eliminated one way or another, and that there appear to be no examples in later French of what might have been the expected outcome of Latin _ŏ_[_n_, that is [œ̃] in closed syllables and [œ.n] in open syllables.

It could be however that the inherited vocabulary simply didn't contain that many words with this phonetic shape to begin with, so I would hesitate to say with any certainty that there was a nasalization effect here. But see Gamillscheg (1956), who concludes on the basis of toponym data "daß auf einem und zwar dem größeren Teil des nordfranzösischen Sprachgebietes die Diphthongierung von _-ŏ__-_ vor Nasal nicht zu _-ue-_ geführt hat". Instead, he proposes (before a nasal): ŏ > uo > ũõ > õ.


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## ahvalj

Riverplatense said:


> I'm not sure whether or not this fits well here, but I have been wondering about the word _épouser_, derived from Latin SPONSARE. Is this one of the few cases in which the galloromanic diphthongation (stressed [o] in open syllable → [ow]), with following monophthongation to  took place despite a following nasal? I can't find a satisfying explanation for this form, the more so as diphthongation in this case seems to affect an unstressed vowel.



"_La forme époux n’est pas, phonétiquement parlant, directement issue de *spōsus, elle est analogique de épouser (de *sposare, forme populaire du bas latin sponsare) où la présence de ou est phonétique, puisqu’il est atone (non frappé par l’accent tonique)"._
http://fr.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/époux#.C3.89tymologie

Thus, _ou_ here is just a digraph for , it never passed through a diphthongal stage (cp. _colorem_>_couleur_ etc.).


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## Riverplatense

ahvalj said:


> Thus, _ou_ here is just a digraph for , it never passed through a diphthongal stage (cp. _colorem_>_couleur_ etc.).




Thank you very much, ahvalj! Meanwhile, I already came to the conclusion that the nasal doesn't matter in this case, since in other romance languages there's no _n_ neither, which leads to the conclusion that it was eliminated (maybe through nasalization) quite early. Thank you, however, for the hint about vocalism.


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## Riverplatense

So it's a case of pretonic raising? If so, I don't understand why there's _fortune _← FORTUNA. I'm particularly interested in this form since there are northern Italian dialects where it developed to _fürtüna_ [fyr'tyna]. Maybe then it's got to with vowel-harmony-like phenomena.


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## ahvalj

Riverplatense said:


> So it's a case of protonic raising? If so, I don't understand why there's _fortune _← FORTUNA. I'm particularly interested in this form since there are northern Italian dialects where it developed to _fürtüna_ [fyr'tyna]. Maybe then it's got to with vowel-harmony-like phenomena.


Old French had two _o_'s: an open (_ǫ_) and a closed (_ọ_) one. The latter changed to _u_ under the stress and in the pretonic position: _turrim_>_tọr_>_tour_, _tōtum_>_tọt_>_tout_, _dubitāre_>_dọter_>_douter_, whereas the former has preserved as _o: taurellum_>_tǫrel_>_taureau_, _sortīre_>_sǫrtir_>_sortir_, _dormīre_>_dǫrmir_>_dormir_. Compare especially _corpus_>_cǫrs_>_corps_ vs. _cursum_>_cọrs_>_cours. 

Fortuna_ had a short _o _in Latin (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fortuna#Latin), hence the open _o_ in Old French and _o_ in the modern language. I don't know how to explain _tornāre_>_tourner_ (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/torno#Latin) though. _Color_>_couleur_ also had the short vowel in Latin (though this may be a learnt word).


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## Nino83

CapnPrep said:


> The standard position is that _ŏ_[_n_ did undergo diphthongization, as the OFr forms indicate. And taken individually, the explanations about _bon_ (and _om_) being proclitic, the noun _son_ being modeled on end-stressed forms of the verb _sonner_



Thank you, CapnPrep. 
It seems that this diphthongization was reversed, like those before the former palatal consonants, for example [nɔcte > nɔjt > nwɔjt > nyit > nɥit]. 



Riverplatense said:


> I already came to the conclusion that the nasal doesn't matter in this case, since in other romance languages there's no _n_ neither, which leads to the conclusion that it was eliminated (maybe through nasalization) quite early.



The change /ns/ > /s/ happened from Vulgar Latin to Proto-Romance, before French nasalization. 



Riverplatense said:


> So it's a case of pretonic raising? If so, I don't understand why there's _fortune _← FORTUNA. I'm particularly interested in this form since there are *northern Italian dialects where it developed to fürtüna* [fyr'tyna]. Maybe then it's got to with vowel-harmony-like phenomena.



Which one? 
In Piedmontese it is [furtyna] (written "fortuna"). 



ahvalj said:


> Old French had two _o_'s: an open (_ǫ_) and a closed (_ọ_) one. The latter changed to _u_ under the stress and in the pretonic position: _
> 
> Fortuna_ had a short _o _in Latin (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/fortuna#Latin), hence the open _o_ in Old French and _o_ in the modern language. I don't know how to explain _tornāre_>_tourner_ (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/torno#Latin) though. _Color_>_couleur_ also had the short vowel in Latin (though this may be a learnt word).



In Gallo-Romance, pre-tonic /o/ (which includes both stressed /ɔ/ and /o/) becomes /u/ (written /ou/ in French and /o/ in Gallo-Italian languages).


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## ahvalj

Nino83 said:


> In Gallo-Romance, pre-tonic /o/ (which includes both stressed /ɔ/ and /o/) becomes /u/ (written /ou/ in French and /o/ in Gallo-Italian languages).


Yet we find _dormir_ and _sortir _and_ taureau._ I understand that the verbs may have been levelled after the stressed Sg. 1–3 and Pl. 3, yet some words remain unexplained anyway.

Update. _Oreille_ vs. _ouvrage_.


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## Nino83

ahvalj said:


> _Oreille_ vs. _ouvrage_.



In this book  they say that in countertonic position: 
/ɔ/ > /ɔ/ in closed syllables, "dòrmire > dòrmir", "hòspitalem > hò(s)tel" and /u/ in open syllables, "còlorem > couleur", "vòlere > vouloir" 
/o/ > /u/ in all countertonic syllables, "souvenir", "souvent"


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## ahvalj

Nino83 said:


> In this book  they say that in countertonic position:
> /ɔ/ > /ɔ/ in closed syllables, "dòrmire > dòrmir", "hòspitalem > hò(s)tel" and /u/ in open syllables, "còlorem > couleur", "vòlere > vouloir"
> /o/ > /u/ in all countertonic syllables, "souvenir", "souvent"


Now we have to explain _tourner, taureau _and_ oreille. _By the way, the first syllable in _ouvrage_ must have been closed in Old French. I chose this word intentionally since its stressed form is _œuvre, _which obviously hasn't influenced.


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## Nino83

"oreille" derives from "auric(u)lu(m)" and "taureau" from "taurum", so it could be that the /au/ diphthong changed, in these cases, to /o/ instead of /u/. 



> Reduction of ten-vowel system of Vulgar Latin to seven vowels; diphthongs ae and oe reduced to /ɛ/ and /e/; maintenance of /au/ diphthong.



http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonol...Vulgar_Latin_through_to_Proto-Western-Romance 

So, unstressed /ɔ/ probably reduced to /o/ in countertonic syllables when /au/ diphthong was still preserved. 

About "tornare", the  dictionary doesn't specify if the "o" is open or closed. Are you sure it is open?


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## ahvalj

In principle, _au_ still existed at the time of the shift _ka_>_ʧa_ (_causa_>_chose_), but the Old French orthography reflects it already as _o_ (_or _[http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/or#Ancien_fran.C3.A7ais],_ oreille_ [http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/oreille#Ancien_fran.C3.A7ais], _toreil _[http://fr.wiktionary.org/wiki/toreil]). Strasbourg oaths have _cosa_ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oaths_of_Strasbourg#Text). Don't know…

As to _tornāre_: when writing, I checked Wiktionary that showed a short vowel (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tornare#Latin), but Spanish has _tornar_/_torno, _which suggests _*tōrnāre _(cp. _cornū_>_cuerno _vs. _ōrnāre>ornar/orno_). De Vaan's Latin etymological dictionary doesn't have this word (at list at the expected place), but if it is a denominal from _tornus,_ as Wiktionary suggests (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tornus#Etymology), then the vowel must have been short as in Greek. OK, let's trust the Spanish evidence.


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## ahvalj

Squence of St. Eulalia (http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sequence_of_Saint_Eulalia) has _kose_ as well, so both texts of the 9th century have _au_ already contracted into _o_. We also find _colomb_, which is still _colombe_ in the modern language, not **_coulombe_ (the short _o_ is attested by Greek and Slavic). It seems that the distribution of both variants of _o_ in pretonic syllables in Old French must have been more nuanced.


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## Riverplatense

ahvalj said:


> Old French had two _o_'s: an open (_ǫ_) and a closed (_ọ_) one. The latter changed to _u_ under the stress and in the pretonic position [...], whereas the former has preserved as _o_.



Thank you. This conservation of _ǫ_, however, does only affect closed syllables, right?



Nino83 said:


> The change /ns/ > /s/ happened from Vulgar Latin to Proto-Romance, before French nasalization.



Thank you. So _n_ was eliminated already by Latin nasalization with eventual loss of the nasal pronunciation.



Nino83 said:


> Which one?
> In Piedmontese it is [furtyna] (written "fortuna").



I'm particularly talking about Bergamasque (_fürtüna_).


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## ahvalj

Riverplatense said:


> Thank you. This conservation of _ǫ_, however, does only affect closed syllables, right?


That's what we're trying to understand. I hope a user with a deeper understanding of the Old French phonetic evolution could help.


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## Riverplatense

ahvalj said:


> As to _tornāre_: when writing, I checked Wiktionary that showed a short vowel (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tornare#Latin), but Spanish has _tornar_/_torno, _which suggests _*tōrnāre _(cp. _cornū_>_cuerno _vs. _ōrnāre>ornar/orno_). De Vaan's Latin etymological dictionary doesn't have this word (at list at the expected place), but if it is a denominal from _tornus,_ as Wiktionary suggests (http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/tornus#Etymology), then the vowel must have been short as in Greek. OK, let's trust the Spanish evidence.



I might be mistaken, but doesn't also the fact Italian _torno_ is pronounced with a closed _o_ prove that in Latin it had to be tōrnō, as otherwise the Italian form would be *tǫrno?


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## Nino83

Riverplatense said:


> Thank you. This conservation of _ǫ_, however, does only affect closed syllables, right?



Yes. In Old French /ò/ > /wò/ > /wè/ in open stressed syllables.


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## CapnPrep

ahvalj said:


> It seems that the distribution of both variants of _o_ in pretonic syllables in Old French must have been more nuanced.


The phonetic evolution was in principle quite straightforward: Latin _ŏ_ and _ō_/_ŭ_ all became closed _o_ in VL, in both open and closed pretonic/initial syllables, and this _o_ raised to _u_ in Old French. The problem is that later normative movements re-Latinized the pronunciation of many (but not all) words and restored _o_ or _ɔ_ in cases like _colombe_, _soleil_, _fromage_, etc. but not in _tourment_, _couronne_, _vouloir_, etc. So there is not really any reliable way to predict the outcome in modern French.


Riverplatense said:


> I might be mistaken, but doesn't also the fact Italian _torno_ is pronounced with a closed _o_ prove that in Latin it had to be tōrnō, as otherwise the Italian form would be *tǫrno?


It doesn't really prove that the vowel was not short in Latin. It could have been short in Latin, but then in Vulgar Latin it may have alternated between open _ɔ_ in stressed syllables and closed _o _in unstressed syllables, and then the paradigm may have been leveled to have only closed _o_ everywhere. This is the problem with Romance verbs…  Anyway, Meyer-Lübke gives short _ŏ_, I guess because of the diphthongized forms _tuorn_, _tuornar_ in Romansch.


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## Nino83

Riverplatense said:


> I'm particularly talking about Bergamasque (_fürtüna_).



I've found also the Genoese "sfürtünou" (page 405) but "afurtünou" (page 186) 

http://digidownload.libero.it/alpdn/TesiDiHull/TheLinguisticUnityOfNI&R.pdf 



> The countertonic [o] and  (< G.R. [ọ]) in French loanwords tended to be interpreted as /[ü] (= G.R. countertonic ) in Northern Italy,


 (page 195)

some example: "c*ü*sin" (Milanese) < "c*ou*sin" (French), "l*ü*kèt" < "l*ou*quet" (this, for example, seems to be another example of Latin restoration, because according to Hull "louquer" was pronounced with a , instead of Modern French [ɔ], spelled loquet) (these words have an [y] in all Gallo-Italian  languages). 



CapnPrep said:


> The phonetic evolution was in principle quite straightforward: Latin _ŏ_ and _ō_/_ŭ_ all became closed _o_ in VL, in both open and closed pretonic/initial syllables, and this _o_ raised to _u_ in Old French. The problem is that later normative movements re-Latinized the pronunciation of many (but not all) words and restored _o_ or _ɔ_ in cases like _colombe_, _soleil_, _fromage_, etc. but not in _tourment_, _couronne_, _vouloir_, etc. So there is not really any reliable way to predict the outcome in modern French.



Other examples are Genoan "f*u*rmaǧu" (French "fr*o*mage"), "b*u*rdèlu" (French "b*o*rdel"), "k*u*stüme" (French "c*o*stume"), Milanese "d*u*trina" (French "d*o*ctrine"), Piacentine "p*u*rtà" (French "p*o*rter") and so on. 

Thank you for the answer. So in Old French and until 1500 also in French the countertonic "o" was commonly raised to "u" in both closed and open syllables, before restoration?


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## Riverplatense

Thank you, Nino.

By the way, I also found different forms for Bergamasque only, like _fortüna _consequently here: http://commedie-dialettali.sfera.net/index_sito.html. Also Tiraboschi (1873–79, _Vocabolario dei dialetti bergamaschi_) gives _fortüna_, whereas Sanga (1987, _Lingua e dialetti di Bergamo e delle valli_) states _fürtüna_.


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## ahvalj

Yet I still have a question to CapnPrep: did the outcome of the Latin _au_ merge with two other _o_'s or did it preserve a separate, open, pronunciation in Old French: are there old or dialectal variants with _ou_ in the words _oreille_ or _toreau_? Taking into consideration that Old French had inherited only a few words with the pretonic Latin _au_, I think such an opposition was quite unlikely.


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## CapnPrep

ahvalj said:


> Yet I still have a question to CapnPrep: did the outcome of the Latin _au_ merge with two other _o_'s or did it preserve a separate, open, pronunciation in Old French: are there old or dialectal variants with _ou_ in the words _oreille_ or _toreau_?


No, these words always kept _o_, as far as I know. So it cannot have been the same vowel. After the merger of the two pretonic _o_'s to _ọ_, the simplification of _au_ reintroduced _ǫ_ in this position. This _ǫ_ raised to _u_ before another vowel — _louer_ < laudare, _ouïr_ < audire, proclitic _ou_ < aut — but not before a consonant. In many cases, there was also paradigmatic pressure from forms with stressed _au_ > _ǫ_, and in fact this vowel shows pretty much the same evolution (again, distinct from primary _ǫ_ < ŏ) in both tonic and pretonic position.


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## Nino83

CapnPrep said:


> Instead, he proposes (before a nasal): ŏ > uo > ũõ > õ.


In Genoese (where there are contrastive long, written â æ ê î êu ö ô û, and short, written à è é ì ò ó ù, vowels), before nasals /n, m/ in open syllables, vowels are shortened. So _buono_ is _bón_ [bun] and _suono_ is _són_ [sun] (for example _lana_ is _lànn-a_ [lana], short, while _casa_ is _câza_ [ka:za], long).
Source TIG (traduttore italiano genovese).
In Bolognese _buono_ is _bån_ [bɑŋ] and according to Daniele Vitali (per un'analisi diacronica del bolognese) the evolution is /bõõ > bɔ̃u > bɔuŋ > bʌuŋ > bʌŋː > bɑŋː/ with a process called by Hajek hardening of nasalized glides, i.e the nasal became long and the vowel was shortened.
Maybe there has been a similar process in French. By the way, vowels before nasals seem to have a different evolution in those languages where they were nasalized, in both open and closed syllables.


Riverplatense said:


> I'm particularly talking about Bergamasque (_fürtüna_).


According to Rohlfs the passage u > ü  is not due to a Gallic substrate because:
a) also the secondary /u/ (from [o], due to metaphonesis) becomes /ü/ => nōi, vōi, dōi > nui, vui, dui (metaphonesis, raised because of the final /i/) > nü, vü, dü (Lombard, Ticinese, Piedmontese)
b) the secondary /u/ of tutto is tüt (Piedmontese, Lombard, Western Emilian) or tütu (Ligurian)
c) the countertonic /o/, which becomes /u/ in Gallo-Italian, becomes /ü/ => giocare > giugà > šügà (Lombard, Ligurian) džüžè (Piedmontese) žügar (Western Emilian)
d) in the Gallo-Italian dialects of Sicily (the Gallo-Italian colonies were founded in the XII century by the Piedmontese) there is only /u/: frutto, crudo, mulo are fru, cru, mu
In other words, according to Rohlfs the passage u > ü in Gallo-Italian doesn't derive from a Gallic substrate but it is a more recent phenomenon, more or less it happened after the X-XI century. This could explain why there are words like giügà and fürtüna.
source: Rohlfs Grammatica storica dell'Italiano e dei suoi dialetti, volume 1, pp. 57-58


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