On Feb 15, 2005, at 5:21 AM, d. collins wrote:
Mark D Lew �crit:Usually, but not always -- �me>anima, s�r>securus, cha�n>catena, r�le>rotulus.
In these cases, it's more than "a consonant" that became silent: a whole syllable.
Well, you could say the same of some of the s ones, eg �le>isola. Anyway, I didn't mean to offer any theory about how the words, or the symbol, evolved. I was only noting that when I think of cognates in other Romance languages I notice the missing consonant and it isn't always an s. With "�me", my first thought is actually "alma", not "anima".
(And even in some of these cases, the circumflex does take the place of an s in the "evolution". Cha�ne comes from catena, of course, but the form that precedes cha�ne is chaisne (See Littr�: Pour porter au col, eut une chaisne d'or, RAB. Garg. I, 8. Tandis que tu as gard� le silence [dit Apelles � Megabysus], tu sembloies quelque grande chose � cause de tes chaisnes et de ta pompe, MONT. IV, 49.))
Thanks, I didn't know about chaisne. My Petit Robert, in its brief etymology, mentions "chaeine" from 1080, but no "chaisne". The pattern of a syllable reducing to just "e" and then becoming a circumflex is also indicated in securus>segur>se�r>s�r.
Again, I'm just noticing and speculating here. I'm really not studied in this at all (though I do find it interesting).
mdl
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