Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 22.djvu/376

 352 vowel resembling the Fr. e "muet," to pronounce o as u, and to drop e after a group of consonants (dent for dente). Consonants. Here the most remarkable feature, and that which most distinctly marks the wear and tear through which the language has passed, is the disappearance of the median consonants I and n : coroa (corona), lua (luna), p6r formerly poer (ponere), conego (canonicus), vir (venire), d6r, formerly door (dolorein), paqo (palatium), saude (salutem), pcgo (pelagus). Latin b passes regularly into v : cavallo (caballus), fava (faba), arvore (arbor em) ; but, on the other hand, Latin initial v readily tends to become 6: bcxiga (vesica), bodo (votum). Latin initial/ never becomes h: fazer (facere), filo (filum). Latin c before e and i is represented either by the hard sibilant s or by the soft z. La till g between vowels is dropped before e and i: ler for leer (legere), dedo (digitum); the same is the case with d, of course, in similar circumstances : remir (redimere), rir (ridere). Latin j has assumed the sound of the French j. The Latin combinations cl, fl, pi at the beginning of words are transformed in two ways in words of popular origin. Either the initial consonant is retained while the I is changed into?-: cravo (clavum), prazer (placere), fror (florein); or the group is changed in ch ( = Fr. ch, Catal. x) through the intermediate sounds kj, fj, pj: chamar (clamare), chao (planus), chamma (flamma). Within the word the same group and other groups also in which the second consonant is an I produce I mouillee (written Ih, just as n mouillee is written nh, as in Provengal): ovelha (ovic'la), vclho (*veclus); and sometimes ch : facho (fac'lum), ancho (amplum). Lat. ss or sc before e and i gives x (Fr. ch): baixo (bassus), faxa (fascia). The group ct is reduced to it: leito (lectum), peito (pectus), noite (noctem); sometimes tout: douto (doctus). Such words asfruto, reto, dileto are modern derivatives from the learned forms fructo, recto, dilecto. Latin cs becomes is: seis (sex); or isc, x ( = Fr. ich, ch): seixo (saxum), luxo (luxum); or even ss: disse (dixi). Inflexion. The Portuguese article, now reduced to the vocalic form o, a, os, as, was lo (exceptionally also el, which still survives in the expression El-Rci), la, los, las in the old language. Words ending in Z in the singular lose the I in the plural (because it then becomes median, and so is dropped): sol (solem), but soes (soles); those having do in the sing, form the plural either in tics or in ocs according to the etymology : thus cdo (canem) makes cdes, but ra$do makes ratjoes. As regards the pronoun, mention must be made of the non-etymological forms of the personal mim and of the feminine possessive minha, where the second n has been brought in by the initial nasal. Portuguese conjugation has more that is interesting. In the personal suffixes the forms of the 2d pers. pi. in odes, ed.es, ides lost the d in the 15th century, and have now become ais, eis, is through the intermediate forms aes, ecs, eis. The form in dcs has persisted only in those verbs where it was protected by the con- sonants n or r preceding it : pondcs, tendes, vindes, amardes, and also no doubt in some forms of the present of the imperative, where the theme has been rediiced to an extraordinary degree by the disappear- ance of a consonant and the contraction of vowels : ides, credes, ledes, &c. Portuguese is the only Romance language which possesses a per- sonal or conjugated infinitive : amar, amar-cs, amar, amar-mos, amar-des, amar -em; e.g., antes de sair-mos, "before we go out." Again, Portuguese alone has preserved the pluperfect in its original meaning, so that, for example, amara (amaveram) signifies not merely as elsewhere "I would love," but also "1 had loved." The future perfect, retained as in Castilian, has lost its vowel of in- flexion in the 1st and 3d pers. sing, and consequently becomes liable to be confounded with the infinitive (amar, render, partir). Portuguese, though less frequently than Castilian, employs ter (tenere) as an auxiliary, alongside of aver ; and it also supplements the use of essere with sedere, which furnished the subj. seja, the imperative sc, sede, the gerundive sendo, the participle sido, and some other tenses in the old language. Among the peculiarities of Portuguese conjugation may be mentioned (1) the assimilation of the 3d pers. sing, to the 1st in strong perfects (houve, pudc, quiz, fez), while Castilian has hube and hubo ; (2) the imperfects punha, tinha, vinha (from por, ter, and vir), which are accented on the radical in order to avoid the loss of the n (ponia would have made pola), and which substitute u and i for o and e in order to dis- tinguish from the present subjunctive (ponha, tenha, venha). [LITERATURE. Galician. Almost all the phonetic features which distinguish Portuguese from Castilian are possessed by Gallego also. Portu- guese and Galician even now are practically one language, and still more was this the case formerly : the identity of the two idioms would become still more obvious if the orthography employed by the Galicians were more strictly phonetic, and if certain transcrip- tions of sounds borrowed from the grammar of the official language (Castilian) did not veil the true pronunciation of the dialect. It is stated, for example, that Gallego does not possess nasal diph- thongs ; still it may be conceded once for all that such a word as pi anus, which in Galician is written sometimes chau and sometimes chan, cannot be very remote from the Portuguese nasal pronuncia- tion chao. One of the most notable differences between normal Portuguese and Galician is the substitution of the surd spirant in place of the sonant spirant for the Lat. j before all vowels and g before e and i: xuez (judicem), Port, juiz; xunto (junctum), P<5ft. junto; xente (gentem), Port, genie. In conjugation the peculiarities of Gallego are more marked ; some find their explana- tion within the dialect itself, others seem to be due to Castilian, influence. The 2d persons plural have still their old form odes, cdcs, ides, so that in this instance it would seem as if Gallego had been arrested in its progress while Portuguese had gone on pro- gressing ; but it is to be observed that with these full forms the grammarians admit contracted forms as well : &s (Port, ais), e's (Port, eis), is (Port. is). The 1st pers. sing, of the perfect of conjugations in er and ir has come to be complicated by a nasal resonance similar to that which we find in the Portuguese mim; we have vendin, partin, instead of vendi, parti, and by analogy this form in in has extended itself also to the perfect of the con- jugation in ar, and/aZwi, gardin, forfalei, gardei are found. The second persons of the same tense take the endings che, ches in the singular and chedes in the plural : falache or falachcs (fabulasti), falachedes as well as faldstcdes (fabulastis), batcche or batiche, pi. batestes or batechedes, &c. Ti (tibi) having given che in Galician, we see iha,tfalasti has become falache by a phonetic process. The 3d pers. sing, of strong perfect is not in e as in Portuguese (houve, pode), but in o (houbo, puido, soubo, coubo, &c. ) ; Castilian influence may be traceable here. If a contemporary grammarian, Saco Arce, is to be trusted, Gallego would form an absolute exception to the law of Spanish accentuation in the imperfect and pluperfect indica- tive : falabdmos, falabddes ; batidmos, batiddes ; pididmos, pididdcs ; andfalardmos,falarddcs; baterdmos, baterddes; pidirdmos,pidirddes. The future perfect indicative and the imperfect subjunctive, on the other hand, would seem to be accented regularly : faldremos, fald- semos. The important question is worth further study in detail. Bibliography. On the general subject the only books to be mentioned are the Grammatik der romanischen Sprachen and the Etymologisches Worterbuch of Diez. 1. CATALAN. On the old language see Manuel Mila" y Fontanals, De los Trovadores en Espaiia, Barcelona, 1861, and several essays by the same author In the Revue des Langues Romanes, the Jahrb. f. roman. u. engl. Literal ur, vol. v., and the Revista Histdrica of Barcelona ; P. Meyer in Romania ; A. Mussafia in the introduction to Die Catalanische metrische Version der sieben weisen Meister, Vienna, 1876 ; and Morel-Fatio in Romania. For modern Catalan, see Ballot y Torres, Gramatica y Apologia de la Llengua Cathalana, Barcelona, 1814 ; A. de Bofarull, Estudios, Sistema Gramatical y Creslomatia de la Lengua Catalana, Barcelona, 1864 ; and, before all, Manuel Mild y Fontanals, Estudios de Lengua Catalana, Barcelona, 1875. The dialectic varieties of Valencia and the Balearics have not yet been sufficiently investigated. On the Catalan of Alghero (Sardinia) there is a memoir by G. Morosi in the Miscellanea di Filologia dedicata alia Memoria dei Prof. Caix e Canello, Florence, 1885. 2. CASTILIAN. Since Diez's time no general work upon Castilian has been published, with the exception of a treatise on Spanish " doublets " by Mme. Carolina Michaelis, Studien zur roman- ischen Wortschopfung, Leipsic, 1876, and a Spanische Sprachlchre, by Paul Forster, Berlin, 1880, which leaves much to be desired. On the grammar of Old Castilian the remarkable articles of Comu in Romania must be consulted. Hitherto the dialects have received but little attention. For Asturian there is a Coleccion de Poesias en Dialecto Asturiano, published at Oviedo in 1839, and some lexico- graphical notes ("Apuntes Lexicograficos sobre una Rama del Dialecto Asturiano") by G. Laverde, in the Reiiista de Asturias for 1879. Navarrese-Aragonese has been worked at by Jerdnimo Borao, Diccionario de Voces Aragonesas, 2d ed., Saragossa, 1885, and Andalusian has been very searchingly investigated by H. Schuchardt in Ztschr. f. rom. Philol., vol. v. On American-Spanish there is an excellent work by R. J. Cuervo, Apuntaciones Crilicas sobre el Leriguaje Bogo- tano, 4th ed., Chartres, 1885. 3. PORTUGUESE. The researches]of Diez have been followed up by F. Adolpho Coelho in two works, Theoria da Conjugaf&o em Latim e Portugitez, Lisbon, 1871, and QuestSes da Lingua Portugueza, 1st pt, Oporto, 1874. MM. Cornu and Coelho have contributed several very important articles in Portuguese to the pages of Romania. For Galician Saco Arce's Gramatica Gallega, Lugo, 1868, and A. Fernandez y Morales's Entayos Poeticos en Dialecto Berciano, with introduction and glossary by Mariano Cubf y Soler, Leon, 1861, ought to be consulted. (A. M.-F.) PART IY. LITERATURE. The name Spanish is now generally restricted to the literature of the Castilian tongue. In the present article it is taken in the wider sense as embracing the literature of the whole Iberian Peninsula, with the exceptions of POR- TUGAL (q.v.) and of Galicia, the latter of which as regards language and literature belongs to the Portuguese domain. Spanish literature thus considered falls into two divisions Castilian and Catalan. I. CASTILIAN LITERATURE. Of the Castilian texts now extant none are of earlier date than the 12th century, and very probably none go farther back than 1150. That accepted as the oldest the Mystery of the Magian Kings, as it is rather inappropriately designated is a fragment of a short semi-liturgical play meant to be acted in the church of Toledo at the feast of Epiphany. Manifestly an imita- tion of the Latin ludi represented in France in the 12th.