Gallo-Romance lenition in Germanic loanwords
The case of ‘market’
One of the earliest changes affecting Western Romance before the end of the Roman Empire was the lenition of
intervocalic *p, *t, *k to *b, *d, *g. We
find its effects in a number of Romance loanwords in West Germanic. The word for ‘market’ has not played a role in this discussion
because it is often attested with t in the West Germanic languages. Still, there are strong indications that the
word was borrowed into Germanic as *markadu after the lenition of intervocalic t in Romance. Its
phonological make-up is comparable to that of Latin vocatus, which was borrowed into Germanic as
*fogadu.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Old Saxon
- 3.Middle Low German
- 4.Middle Dutch
- 5.Old High German
- 6.Middle High German
- 7.Old Frisian
- 8.Old English
- 9.Gallo-Romance
- 10.Multiple borrowing?
- 11.Latin vocatus ‘reeve, guardian’
- 12.Conclusion
- Notes
-
References