Etymological Comment

Phonetic Analysis:

Transformation from Latin to French for: Ditié De Jehanne D’Arc

CASTELLUM /kasˈtel.lum/ > Chasteaulx/ʃɑtɛw/  > châteaux /ʃɑto/ (Singular) English: “Castle”

1. Castellum > chastellum: Begin with the palatalization of the stop velar unvoiced [k] to the affricate [tʃ]“ch”.
2. Chastellum > chastellum: Then, the middle affricate stage of “ch,” [tʃ] deaffricates and changes to the fricative post-alveolar voiceless [ʃ]“chi”
3. Chastellum > chastell: Follow by the lenition of word final consonant “m”, lenition of word final vowel that is not the letter “a”, so in this case, it is the letter “u” that disappears.
4. Chastell > chastel: Then, a degimination of word final [LL] cluster to singular [L]
5. Chastel > chasteaul: Follow by a high mid front [e] “e” becomes high mid back rounded [o] “eau”. Consider the evolution of the stressed vowel from Latin. The grapheme “e” in “-tel” corresponds to a short one, therefore it is a closed syllable, and evolves into the low mid /ɛ/. The vocalic group /ɛl/ > /eau/ “eau”, by lenition into /w/ of /l/ in coda position: /l/ > /w/ “u” in coda position.
6. Chasteaul > chasteau: Also, there is the deletion of unstressed “L” in coda position. Therefore, you end up with the vocalic group /eau/, which was the pronunciation of “eau” at the time of your text. Later / ɛaw/ > / ɛw/ > /o/.
7. Chasteau > château: Lastly, there is the lenition of “s” in coda position, addition of accent to show non etymological change. The spelling stayed the same, but the pronunciation of “eau” evolved. At the time of my text, “eau” would probably be pronounced as /ɛaw/ or / ɛw/. The phonetic transcription of the word in your text must reflect this difference between the pronunciation of “eau” in Old and in Modern French.

 

REGEM /régem/ > roy > roi /Rwa/ English: King

1. REGEM /re-gem/ > ROYGEM /roj-gem/. This is after the stressed high-mid front /e/ in the penultimate, and free syllable undergoes diphthongization to /oj/
2. ROYGEM /rojgem/ > ROY /Roj/. This is after syncope of the unstressed final syllable “gem.” (Old French form of the word).
3. ROY /Roj/ > ROI /Rwa/. The final step: after the stressed vowel continues to evolve from the high-mid back followed by a jod /oj/ to a glide followed by the low center /wa/.

VOSTER/ˈwɔs.tɛr/> VOSTRE [vɔtʁ] > VÔTRE [vɔtʁ] English: “your”

1. Voster > vostre: This begins with a metathesis of “er” cluster to “re”
2. Vostre > vostre: Followed by the evolution of [ŏ] in stressed syllable in Classical Latin becomes low mid back rounded [ɔ] in Vulgar Latin, subsequently remaining [ɔ] in Middle French in a blocked syllable
3. Vostre > votre: Then lenition of fricative alveolar voiceless “s” in coda position
4. Votre > votre: The word final [e] in Vulgar Latin becomes stable [ə] in Middle French
5. Votre > vôtre: This is the addition of an accent to the low mid back rounded [ɔ] to show non etymological deletion of “s” above
6. Vôtre > vôtre: In the final step, while the word final [ə] in Middle French is still pronounced at that time, it now becomes unpronounced in Modern French, but is still written in the grapheme.

 

FORTUNA /fɔrˈtuː.na/>FORTUNE[fɔʀtyne]  English: “Fortune” different pronunciation [fɔʀtyn]

1. Fortuna> Fortune: The final letter low center vowel /a/ is dropped as part of the evolution of French words ending sounds, and transforms to a mid-high front /ə / which is represented in this case with the grapheme as “e”.
2. At the state of old French, the mid-high front /e/ was still pronounced at some point.
3. The modern French is a complete disappearance of the pronunciation of the final /e/, but in written it still appears. In other words, this final vowel is dropped in Modern French, the grapheme stays.

ILEX /ˈiː.leks/ >EULZ[ølz] >EUX[ø] English: “them”

1. Ilex > elex: Begin with the stressed short high front vowel [i] in Classical Latin becomes mid high front vowel [e] in Vulgar Latin, which remains the same in French.
2. Elex > eulex: Then, the non-etymological evolution of stressed short [i] in Classical Latin becomes the high mid front “e” [e] in Vulgar Latin, when, in a free syllable, becomes high mid front rounded “eu” [ø]
3. Eulex [ølekse]> eules [øles]: Further evolution of cluster [kse] “x” into [s] “s”. Probably the diphthong “eu” was still pronounced in the middle stage /ɛw/.
4. Eules > eulez: Probably the diphthong “eu” was still pronounced in the middle stage /ɛw/. This is lenition of stopped consonant “x” [ks] to fricative alveolar “z” [z]
5. Eulez > eulz: This is the syncope of high mid front vowel [e] because it is in an unstressed syllable.
6. Eulz: > eux: Finally, there is the syncope of “L” in unstressed position, overcorrection of “z” to previous spelling “x”. Step 5& 6: It can be considered as the evolution of /l/ “L” in coda position to /w/.

 

DESTRUO /ˈdeːs.tru.oː/ > DESTRUIRE  [destrɥirə] > DÉTRUIRE [detʁɥiʁ] English: “destroy”

1. Destruere > destruire: Begin on the non-etymological change of high mid front vowel [e] to high front vowel [i] This is a 3rd class/conjugation verb, which means that the infinitive is rhizotonic, with stress on the root. Thus, the stress would be in “TRU”. Probably this was a long high back in Latin, and thus it evolved as /y/, which when in a diphthong is represented as /ɥ/. Many 3^rdclass verbs assimilate to 4^thclass verbs in IRE.
2. destruire > détruire: This marks the deletion of the fricative alveolar voiceless consonant [s]
3. détruire [detrɥire] > détruire [detrɥir]: The word final [e] in Vulgar Latin was voiced/ pronounced [ə] in Middle French, but becomes unvoiced/ not pronounced in Modern French.
4. détruire [detrɥir] > détruire [detʁɥiʁ]: Finally the evolution of [r] in Vulgar Latin to [ʁ] in Modern Standard French.

 

PROPHETIA [profetia] > PROPHECIE [profetsi] > PROPHÉTIE [pʁɔfesi] English: “Prophecy”

1. Prophetia > Prophetie: Begin with the word final low centered vowel [a] in Vulgar Latin becomes the mid central [ə] represented as “e”

1. Prophetie > Prophecie: Then, there is a transformation to the affricate alveolar middle stage [ts] “cie” in Middle French. To elaborate, this is a palatalization by assimilation of /t/ to /j/ “i”, which is a high (palatal) vowel.

3. Prophecie > Prophecie: Follow by a palatalization of unvoiced alveolar stopped in the palatal cluster [tj] “c” to fricative alveolar voiceless [s].
4. Prophecie > Prophetie: Then, the transformation from Middle French into Modern French by making the “c” to the “t” that was present in the Latin etymon, but the pronunciation remains [s]
5. Prophétie > Prophétie[pʁɔfesi]: Lastly, the mid central [ə] becomes unvoiced in Modern French, it was pronounced in old French, and the writing of the grapheme “e” need to remain in the word in the present day.

 

LUPUS [lu:pus] > LOUPS> LOUPS [lu]English: “Wolf”

1. Lupus>Lups: The stressed syllable in Latin is the antepenultimate “lu”, so the penultimate syllable is in the weak position. Therefore, there is the syncope of unstressed high back vowel /u/.
2. Lups> Loups: This step is the addition of the mid-high vowel /o/ which yields a diphthong of “ou”. Probably /p/ and /s/ undergo complete lenition due to their coda position.
3. A side note is that we need to keep into account the middle stages of pronunciation of diphthongs: “ou” probably went through a /ow/ stage.

 

MĪLLE [mīl-le] > MILES [milə] > MILLE [mil] English: “thousands”

1. Mille > Mile > Mille: There is a temporary instability/ slight change of the [LL] palatal cluster to the singular “L” due to spelling during a sound change of word final vowel “e”. Maybe de-gimination of /ll/ into /l/ still represented as “ll”?
2. Mille > mille: Lastly, the word final [e] in Vulgar Latin becomes stable voiced [ə] in Middle French, but later becomes unvoiced in Modern French, but the letter “e” is still is written .

SANGUIS/ˈsan.ɡʷis/ > SANC [sank] > SANG [sã]English: “blood”

1. Sanguis > Sangui: Begin with a process of lenition of word final “s” in coda position.The text at this time /a/ was already nasal, by assimilation to nasal feature of /n/.

2. Sangui > Sang: Another lenition of word final “ui” [ɥi] vowel cluster in coda position
3. Sang > Sanc: Then the evolution of voiced velar stopped [g] to voiceless velar plosive [k]. The stressed vowel [ă] in Classical Latin becomes low front [a] in Vulgar Latin, and remains in Middle French in a blocked syllable
4. Sanc > sanc [sãnk]: Follow by a nasalization of “a” low front [a] becomes low front nasal [ã],
5. Sanc > sang [sã]: Lastly, another lenition of final consonant in coda position, that is the hypercorrection of spelling to reflect Latin etymon.

 VITA/ˈwiː.toː/> VIE [vi]  English :”Life”

1. Vita> Via: The intervocalic consonant /t/ in Latin is weak because it is between 2 vowels, so there is a complete lenition/ disappearance of the /t/.
2. Probably at the time of the text, the diphthong “ie” was still pronounced as a diphthong /je/. This the middle stage of evolution, with the /je/ to /i/
3. Via> Vie: The grapheme low center /a/ in the last step changes to modern grapheme mid high front /e/ in the end of a word.
4. Vie>Vie: The middle stage of this word in Middle French is vie, and the mid high front /e/ was pronounced at some point in history, however, in the modern version of French, the /e/ is written, but not a specific pronunciation is assigned to it.

COR/kŏr/ > CUER /kweR/ > COEUR/kœR/ English: Heart

1. COR /kŏr/ > CUER /kweR/ The stressed vowel is vowel /o/. This is after the stressed Classical Latin short mid back /ŏ/ becomes the Vulgar Latin low mid back /ᴐ/. It then diphthongizes to /we/ in Old French.
2. CUER/kweR/ > COEUR /kœR/ Since the stressed vowel is in a blocked syllable in the Modern French reflex, the diphthong /we/ becomes the low-mid front rounded /œ/.
3. There is an exception to this: the stressed syllable in the Latin etymon is blocked, so the stressed vowel should’ve stay the low mid back /ᴐ/. However, it evolves as a free syllable in the etymon, and diphthongized to /we/ and then becomes the /œ/.

 

Verbal Morphology:

#1 Latin: Habere Word in text: Avoir Class II

In the earlier stages, aveir, aver, from Vulgar Latin avēre, from Latin habēre (“have, hold, possess”), present infinitive of habeō. Habeo, unlike esse, was completely regular but as it came to be used as an auxiliary, it was subject to unusual phonetic attrition. The infinitive in modern French is “avoir” and this in all three of the languages are considered regular. Step One: loss of /h/as people no longer pronounce /h/ in Popular Latin, from which the Romance languages derivedand the result: /abere/. Step Two: diphthongization. A stressed high mid /e/ in a free syllable changes to a diphthong, /ej/and the result: /abejr/. Step Three: the loss of word-final vowels(in French, word-final vowels (except a) all get lost). Result: /abeyr/. Step Four: Asthe intervocalic consonant /b/ undergoes lenition, changing from a plosive to a fricative /v/and the result: /avejr/. Step Five: yod development, /ej/ develops into /wa/and the result: /avwar/. Step Six: The Germanic influenceas the change to the /r/ is a Frankish or German influence (an influence outside of Latin). In Germanic languages, this /ʁ/ is common, and it had an influence on the French.Result:  / avwaʁ/  “avoir”.

 

 

#2 Latin: Tenere

Word in text: Tenir > Modern French: Tenir  Class II

Tenere in Latin belongs to Class II verb. It reflects stress-induced allomorphy. This is a typical one as the position of the stressed vowel varies in a “boot pattern”. As usual, for the singular and third person plural forms, the stressed low-mid front /ɛ/ in the stem diphthongizes to /jɛ/. However, in the first & second person plural forms, the vowel in the stem is unstressed, so it does not change. As usual in French, the 1^stperson plural evolves by analogy with the Latin verb “sumus” and yields /-ɔ̃/. For the second person plural inflexion, it evolves from /-etis/ to /-e/ through syncope of the unstressed high front vowel /i/ and lenition, which result a voiceless lingua-alveolar affricate /ts/. Just a side note, although the 1^stperson singular “s” comes from anlogy with the 2^ndperson singular, the inflexions for the second person singular (“s”), third person singular (“t”), and third person plural (“ent”) are etymological.

 

#3 Latin: Amare

French: aimet >  aime (present tense,  3^rd  person singular) Class I

This verb in the present indicative form is the third person singular “aimet” /ɛmet/, so it is derived from the Latin /amare/. In ‘aimer’ the stressed stem prevails. For Class I verb, the stress normally falls off the root of the infinitive, but on the root of the third person singular form, ex. AMARE (infinitive) AMAT (third person singlular). Also, in Class I verbs, generally an /-A-/ will yield the vowel /ə/ “e” in Old French and then on its way to Modern French will become zero, yet will still be represented graphemically as “e”, and that means: “aimet” or /ɛmət/. In other words, in old French, the “e” was still pronounced, but in modern version of French, the “e” at the end is not pronounced. Although the final /t/ found in /AMAT/ still remains, it will eventually disappear when transforming to the Modern form “aime” /ɛme/.

#4 Latin: Servire

French (Middle/Old and Modern): Word in text: Servir: Class IV

From Latin servīre, present active infinitive of serviō. In Old and Modern French is the same grapheme: ‘servir. The verb servir shows stress-induced vowel allomorphy. This allomorphy is induced by stress position. In the present tense paradigms of Popular Latin, the stress position alternates in the boot pattern, producing stem allomorphy. Servire /serwire/ > server /sɛʁviʁ/ > server /sɛʁviʁ/. At some point of time since the old French, the /e/ at the end was deleted. Thus, we get: Servir: sers, sers, sert, servons, servez, servent (All in present form conjugations).

 

#5 Latin: Termināre

French (Middle/Old and Modern): word in text: terminer /tɛʁmine/  Class I

The verb ‘terminer’ in French was borrowed from Latin terminō, termināre. In Class I, alternation is stress of the root for infinitive form. First, in French, the rule is deleting the vowel of the last syllable, except for -a# (which prevent this allomorphy from happening in Class I verb). In ‘terminer’ the stressed stem prevails. Also, in Class 1 verbs, generally an /-A-/ will yield the vowel /ə/ “e” in Old French and then on its way to Modern French will become zero, yet will still be represented graphemically as “e”. This is not so much in the infinitive form, but in other forms of conjugation in French, the “e” was still pronounced in Old French, but in modern version of French, the “e” at the end is not pronounced ex: Je termine /tɛʁmin/. The ‘are’ in the end of the Latin transforms to ‘er’ in French that follows through regular evolution of the boot pattern: je termine, tu termines, il termine, nous terminons, vous terminez, ils terminent.

 

#6 Latin: Videre

Old/Middle French: Veir Modern French: Voir Class II

The verb “videre” in Latin is a Class II verb, and it shows stress-induced allomorphy. The verb position of the stressed vowel varies in the “boot pattern”. In all forms, the word-initial glide /w/ undergoes fortition to the voiced labiodental fricative /v/. Also, in all forms, the high mid short front vowel /ĭ/ diphthongizes to /oj/ and then /wa/. Generally, the first person plural form evolves by analogy and yields /-ɔ̃/. The second person plural inflexion evolves from /-etis/ to /-e/ through syncope of the unstressed high front vowel /i/ and then undergoes lenition to get the voiceless lingua-alveolar affricate /ts/. For the inflexions of the second person singular “s”, third person singular “t”, and third person plural “ent” are etymological. However, we see that the first person singular “s” comes from analogy with the second person singular. In the first and second person plural forms, the jod /j/ separates the stem and inflexion.

Noun Morphology :

1.Original: (XVII) …Je prie à Dieu que cellui soies, et qu’il te doit…

Modern Translation: Je prie Dieu que vous soyez la personne que j’ai décrite

English Translation: I pray to God that you may be the person I have described

The Modern French first person singular “je” evolved from the Latin first singular subject /EGO/, which in tonic (stressed) form becomes “moi” and in its light or atonic (unstressed) form becomes “je”. The source of the “je” seen in Ditie de Jehanne d’Arc is in Middle French, but follows a pattern of sound evolution in which /EGO/ > /eo/ > /jo/. /jo/ in Old French then continued to evolve to the Modern form and then became the affricate /dʒə/ which then de-affricated to the Modern pronunciation, /ʒə/ “je”. The “je” is in the pronoun in the first-person singular nominative case, it has no feminine or masculine changes.

 

2.Original (XIV):… que ton pays,qui se perdoit…

Modern Translation : récupérer votre pays que vous étiez sur le point de perdre

English Translation : recover your country which you were on the point of losing

The Middle and Modern French noun “pays”, derived from Latin “pagensis” /paːˈɡen.sis/. It can be considered as in the third declension. From Old French païs, from Late Latin pāgēnsis (“inhabitant of a district”), derived from Latin pāgus (“countryside; district”). Pagensis regularly reduced to “pagesis”, becomes “pais”, then “pays”. In the text, “pays” is in masculine form, and in Modern French, the plural “pays” is also written as “pays” as in /pei/.

 

3.Orignal (XXXV): … a jointes mains,grans et menus

Modern Translation: Avec les mains jointes, petits et grands…

English Translation: With hands clasped, both great and small…

In the text as Middle French and Modern French, the noun “main” /mɛ̃/ is the singular form for hand, and “mains” is both hands. This noun is from Latin “manus” /ˈma.nus/, feminine (genitive manūs), and in the fourth declension. The fourth declension is a group of nouns consisting of mostly masculine words, with a few feminine exceptions, including manus, manūs f. And this in group 4 has adjusted to group 2. In French, the plural form “mains”, even though there is a “s” at the end, the “s” is emphasized, so not pronounced in Modern French.

 

4.Original (XV) Il n’estoit de Lui ordonnée

Modern Translation: Non ordonné par lui

English Translation: Not ordained by him

Subject clitics are necessary in French, unlike in Spanish and Italian. It is irregular: similar to first and second declensions but with genitive singular ending in -īus and dative singular ending in -ī. “Il” comes from the vulgar Latin ILLI, and this masculine singular he: “il” could have evolved as “el” but did not, because it is attributed to metaphony induced by final long I. This is nominal morphology unique to French.

 

5.Original (XXVII): Contre lui,et tout conquestoit

Modern Translation: et il a tout conquis en vue.

English Translation: and he conquered everything in sight.

The Middle/Modern French tonic third person pronoun “lui” comes from the Vulgar Latin masculine singular /ILLUI/. French tonic pronouns generally evolve regularly and “lui” is a good example to illustrate this. “Lui” in its Modern form replaces not only the Old French tonic subject pronoun “il” from ILLI, but also the Middle French atonic masculine and dative singulars “li” from the Latin ILLI and “li” “lei” “lie” from the Latin ILLE(I). It is interesting to see the translation into Modern French, the translator has chosen to use the verb “entourer”, meaning “to be around”. So, due to Modern standard phonetic and graphemic regulations, we see that the Modern “lui” becomes shortened to /l + ’/ before a word initial vowel in writings. In some French sentences, the personal pronoun “lui” /lɥi/ can also refer to a feminine case, ex: when saying to her, can also use lui.

 

6.Original (XXXII): Et sa belle vie, par foy,

Modern Translation: Et, en vérité, la beauté de sa vie

English Translation: And, in truth, the beauty of her life

In the text, “vie” means life, and “vie” /vi/ is the same pronunciation and spelling for both Middle and Modern French. This is a noun from Latin noun “vita” /ˈwiː.ta/, with the loss of medial letter “t”. This is in the first declension, and it is a feminine noun. Nouns of the first declension usually end in -a in the nominative singular and are mostly feminine. Also, a side note is that feminine nouns from declension 5 go to declension 1 during the reconstruction period. In this sentence during the text, the vie takes an indirect case. For plural case, just simply add a “s” at the end of “vie” to becomes “vie”, but the pronunciation does not include the “s” sound.