Gender Marking (nouns and adjs)
Number marking (nouns and adjs)
Pronouns (subj and obj)
Articles (def and indef)
Phrase: Modern and English Translation
1. Quant Tierris ad vencue sa bataille
1. Dès que Tierri sort du combat vainqueur,
1. As soon as Tierri emerges from the victorious combat,
- The old French singular possessive adjective “sa” /sa/ comes from the Latin euis /ˈej.jus/, [ˈɛj.jʊs] which is the genitive singular possesive. The gender is feminine and is taken from the attached noun. The article was developed from regular phonetic analysis. Metathesis of s to the beginning of the word and assimilation of the vowel cluster /eui/ to the grapheme /a/.
- The word bataille comes from the etymon battualia. The consonant cluster /tt/, became t after undergoing lenition. The /ua/ undergoes assimilation to the grapheme /a/ which then diphthongizes to /ai/. The word final vowels /ai/ assimilate to a and due to the rules of French, the a becomes the grapheme e.
2. Venuz i est li emperere Carles, 6. Quatre serjanz les acoeillent devant,
2. l’empereur Charles vient à lui, 6. Quatre valets les dirigent
2. the Emperor Charles comes to him, 6. Four valets lead them
- The masculine old French li/les comes from the Latin plural illōs(m) and illās(f) which are the accusative plurals of the singular nominative masculine ille and feminine illa. The consonant cluster undergoes lenition and becomes l to yield the word ile. The word final vowel is lost and the l and i undergo metathesis to yield li and preserve the strength of the word.
3. Des ore cumencet l’ocisiun des altres.
3. C’est alors que le supplice de Ganelon et de ses parents commence
3. It is then that the torture of Ganelon and his parents begins.
- The old French plural noun altres [aLTrez] comes from the Latin plural noun alters [aLTrez] which means the other. The number marking grapheme s was developed through analogy and there is no gender held. This yields the modern plural autres. There is no morphology which took place.
4. Carles apelet ses cuntes e ses dux:
4. Charles fait venir ses comtes et ses ducs
4. Charles summons his counts and dukes:
- I could not find any information on the origin of the old plural French possessive ses, so I assume the Latin form was almost exactly the same and the word was yielded through morphology. There is no gender and the number marking grapheme is s.
- The old plural French noun cuntes [kUntez] comes from the plural Latin noun comites [kOmitez]. The number marking grapheme s was developed through analogy and there is no gender held. The /i/ was lost due to it’s inter-consonantal position, the /m/ assimilated to /n/ and the /o/ evolved into a /u/.
- The number marking grapheme “x” was developed through analogy and there is no gender held.
5. Li reis cumandet un soen veier, Basbrun:
5. Alors le roi appelle Basbrun, l’exécuteur de sa haute justice
5. Then the king calls Basbrun, the executor of his high justice:
- The old singular masculine French un comes from the Latin singular numeral unum which means one as un refers to a singular item. The glide following /um/ was lost in evolution.
- The old French singular noun reis [rejs] comes from the Latin etymon regis [regem], a singular noun, which occurred from loss of the intervocalic g, and evolution from ei [ej] to oi [wa] to become the modern rois [rwa].