From: Mangiat (mangiat@tin.it)
Date: Fri Jan 19 2001 - 06:22:20 EST
> Hi everyone,
Hi, Christophe!
> Lately I've been wondering about semantic changes from Proto-Romance to
the
> different Romance langs. Principally I've been thinking about the
different
> translations of French "parler": to talk, to speak, in different Romance
langs
> I know. Thus I found:
> French: parler
> Italian: parlare
> Spanish: hablar
> Portuguese: falar
>
> French and Italian seem to derive the verb for "to talk" from the same
origin
> (I would guess VL *parlare, tell me if I'm wrong. If I'm not, then I would
> really like to know what it meant in Latin).
Which should be from 'parabulare', a verbalization of 'parabula', a Greek
loan meaning 'short story with didactic purposes'. So Italian 'parlare' and
French 'parler' originally meant 'to tell a short story', hence 'to talk'.
Northern Italian dialects often use 'dis+currere', from the verb 'currere',
'to run'. Lombard has 'discurr'.
> For what I know of Spanish and
> Portuguese sound changes, they derive their verb from an earlier *fablar
that I
> would connect with Latin *fabulare (not sure it exists) and fabula, which
in
> turn gave in French "fable": "(unbelievable) story" and "fabuler": "to
tell
> unbelievable stories".
So the semantic shift 'tale' -> 'to talk' is quite common... even if
different langs have used different words for 'tale'.
Luca
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.7 : Fri Oct 03 2003 - 12:19:45 EST