Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2023 February 10

= February 10 =

Overlines in Add MS 89149
In British Library Additional MS 89149 there appear throughout the text overlines whose purpose I don't immediately understand. These can be seen on the very first page of the work proper, above encheꝛiꝺi$\overline{on}$ wh$\overline{ich}$, ceꝛt$\overline{en}$, bo$\overline{th}$ and so forth. I know that sometimes the overline is used to abbreviate a word, but that does not appear to be its function here, because the words it is placed over are not incomplete. Brian Cumming does not seem to take notice of the overlines when quoting from the manuscript in this article. What do these marks mean? Shells-shells (talk) 04:18, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * I'm guessing you have a browser issue and it is not rendering the font correctly because I don't see any overlines. (I'm using Firefox.) 41.23.55.195 (talk) 09:12, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * @Shells-shells: It's not clear where you are seeing the overlines. If it's on the text on the web page British Library Additional MS 89149, then I see neither underlines, nor characters such as  and  . If you're referring to the bindings, can you say which of the 309 images available you're referring to? (The image viewer shows the page references top-right, starting with   (I'm using Chrome desktop browser.) Bazza (talk) 10:17, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * These overlines can be seen on folio f.1r where they are part of a written manuscript (ie it is nothing to do with computer fonts or rendering). -- Verbarson talkedits 10:50, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Yes, they're present throughout the MS, as are frequent "/-es" between words. I don't know the answer, but my uninformed guess is that they're a guide to emphases and pauses for someone reading the text aloud to an audience, such as was common practice in monasteries during communal meals in the refectory. {the poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 51.198.141.181 (talk) 15:46, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * To clarify, yes, I'm referring to the MS here. A scan is available on the abovementioned British Library webpage, and also in the Internet Archive. Shells-shells (talk) 16:17, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * They seem to be frequent over ns and ms at the ending of words, and my first thought was that they may be related to the macron-like mark used in Latin manuscripts to indicate a missing nasal following the letter over which it appears (even though in this MS the nasal letters aren't missing). Maybe in those cases they're used to distinguish the nasals from other things, like u or ui or ii, that are also made up of series of minims. They also tend to appear over digraphs (like ch and th) that represent a single sound different from the sounds of the individual letters. Those two usages suggest that they could possibly function something like ties or slurs in musical notation. Pure speculation on my part, of course. Deor (talk) 17:09, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * This seems plausible, but note that these overlines are not always used consistently (which surely would be expected if they had a disambiguatory purpose). See, for example, line 2 and line 6 of fol. 6v: $\overline{com}$ytted is written both with and without an overline. Shells-shells (talk) 19:06, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * They appear to be associated with a lower case 'i' somewhere in the overlined word. Probably an extension of the dot on the 'i'. Great Crested Dave (talk) 19:53, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * That wouldn't explain the "certen" and "both" examples cited in Shells's original post, though. Deor (talk) 20:00, 10 February 2023 (UTC)
 * Looking at the text with an unpracticed eye, I notice that many of the overlines have a distinct 'tick' at the rh end, but some appear as a simple horizontal line. This may be coincidental. Although they don't appear to be abbreviation marks, I found Capelli's 1929 Dizionario Di Abbreviature of Latin and Italian abbreviations (in Italian) interesting. A page from the School of Advanced Study at the University of London deals with this sort of thing. MinorProphet (talk) 16:04, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
 * The more recent Guide to scripts used in English writings up to 1500 by Jane Roberts (2015) may be of some use, dubious link redacted...  MinorProphet (talk) 16:20, 12 February 2023 (UTC)
 * They seem to indicate the omission of "e", "ne", or "me" at the end of a word. The manuscript is from 1523, around which time I think those would have been more or less standard in spelling but not pronounced. So "man" with overline instead of "manne", "certeyn" with overline instead of "certeyne", "both" with overline instead of "bothe", etc. The versions without those endings are now our standard spellings. --Amble (talk) 19:21, 13 February 2023 (UTC)

Latin -it > Spanish -o
Does anyone know how the Latin perfect ending -it (3rd person singular) as in "clamavit" and "dixit" became Spanish -o, as in "llamó" and "dijo"? It's a bizarre vowel shift as it appears to cross the entire chart diagonally. I wondered if it was something to do with the -au- in the Latin perfect stems on -are verbs but that wouldn't explain why it also appears in Spanish reflexes of the other verbs. Not finding any answers in Spanish conjugation or History of the Spanish language; would welcome any sources. – filelakeshoe (t / c) 🐱 09:09, 10 February 2023 (UTC)


 * Dijo is irregular. The process will be different for regular llamó.
 * Romance verbs shows the result of Vulgar *amáut to be similar in Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Sicilian.
 * The developments include:
 * The -v- of the perfect tenses were dropped or elided, but sometimes become /u/ after vowels.
 * From Vulgar Latin:
 * In the perfect, many languages generalized the -aui ending most frequently found in the first conjugation. This led to an unusual development; phonetically, the ending was treated as the diphthong /au/ rather than containing a semivowel /awi/, and in other cases the /w/ sound was simply dropped. We know this because it did not participate in the sound shift from /w/ to /β̞/. Thus Latin amaui, amauit ("I loved; he/she loved") in many areas became proto-Romance *amai and *amaut, yielding for example Portuguese amei, amou. This suggests that in the spoken language, these changes in conjugation preceded the loss of /w/.
 * For dijo, a similar irregularity is trajo (and the archaic truxo/trujo).
 * -- Error (talk) 11:59, 10 February 2023 (UTC)


 * The -o in dijo, trajo, hizo, etc. is probably due to analogy with the widespread -(i)ó forms and to distinguish the 3rd person from 1st person dije, traje, hice, etc. The form puso from posuit may come directly from the Latin form, and if so, might have reinforced this analogy. Qoan (talk) 15:10, 10 February 2023 (UTC)

It's a bizarre vowel shift as it appears to cross the entire chart diagonally. -- true, but it's not unique: uk:Ікавізм is an exact opposite, Ukrainian [i] emerging from East Slavic [o]. --213.137.72.62 (talk) 14:19, 10 February 2023 (UTC)