In the previous section we saw that Sp. lenguaje is not a patrimonial word in Spanish, that it was borrowed
either from Old Occitan/Provençal (Southern French) lengatge, through the troubadour connection, or else from the related
Catalan word llenguatge, both of
which are cognates of the northern French word from where English borrowed the word
language (modern French langage [lɑ̃.ˈɡaʒ]). We said that all of
these words can be traced back to the Vulgar Latin word *linguāticum, which contains ending ‑āticum, which became a noun-forming derivational suffix in Late Latin.
This suffix is attached to the root lĭng‑
of the word lĭngua that
meant ‘tongue’ and ‘language’ (cf. patrimonial Sp. lengua).
The origin of ‑ātĭcum
as a noun-forming derivational suffix is quite unusual. There is no doubt
that this suffix is derived from the neuter form of a minor variant of the
adjective forming suffix (nominative) ‑ĭc‑(us) (feminine ‑ĭc‑(a),
neuter ‑ĭc‑(um)), one that was derived from it by the adding
of the ‘infix’ ‑āt‑, resulting in the ending ‑āt-ĭc-(us).
Only a handful of Latin nouns added this ‑āt-ĭc-(us) to a
noun to form a derived adjective, however:[1]
- from the noun aqua ‘water’ (cf. Sp. agua), it derived the adjective ăquātĭcus ‘living, growing, or found in or by the water, aquatic’ (L&S) (cf. Eng. aquatic ~ Sp. acuático/a)
- from the noun lūna ‘moon’ (cf. Sp. luna), we get lūnātĭcus ‘living on the moon; epileptic, lunatic, moon-struck, crazy’ (cf. Eng. lunatic ~ Sp. lunático/a)
- from the noun fānum ‘a place dedicated to some deity by forms of consecration, a sanctuary, temple’, we get the adjective fānātĭcus ‘pertaining to a temple; inspired by a divinity, enthusiastic’ (cf. Eng. fanatic ~ Sp. fanático/a)
- from the noun umbra ‘a shade, shadow; the dark part of a painting, shade, shadow’, we get the adjective umbrātĭcus ‘of or belonging to the shade, found in the shade (figuratively: related to retirement, seclusion, or leisure)’
- from the noun cēna ‘dinner’ (cf. Sp. cena), we get the very rare adjective cēnātĭcus ‘pertaining to a dinner’
- from the noun vĭa ‘a way, a highway, road, path, street; a way, method, mode, manner, fashion, etc.,’ (cf. Sp. vía) > vĭātĭcus ‘of or belonging to a road or journey, viatic’ (cf. Eng. viatic ~ Sp. viático)
Occasionally, though very rarely, Latin adjectives ending in …ātĭcus resulted from the addition of the adjectival ‑ĭc‑(us) suffix to a first conjugation verb’s passive participle that ended in ‑ā‑t‑(us). The following is one such case:
- from the passive participle stem vol‑ā‑t‑ of the passive participle vol‑ā‑t‑us of the verb volāre ‘to fly’ (cf. Sp. volar), we get vŏlātĭcus ‘flying, winged; fleeting, flighty, volatile, inconstant, transitory’
Late Latin started using the neuter form ‑ātĭcum
of the suffix ‑ātĭcus/a/um to
form nouns (not adjectives) from other nouns, such as abstract nouns and collective
nouns. So we could say that the meaning of this suffix when added to a noun X is
‘something (abstract, etc.) related to X’. That is how the word lĭnguātĭcum
came to be derived from lĭngua
‘tongue’. The motivation may have been to distinguish the two different senses of
Lat. lĭngua, namely
‘tongue’ (the organ) and ‘language’.
Another derivation that we find in Late Latin that used this
suffix is the word mĭssātĭcum
‘message’, which in this case is derived from the stem mĭss‑ of the passive participle mĭssum ‘sent’ of the third conjugation verb mĭttĕre ‘to
send, release, discharge, etc.’ (mĭss‑um).
This noun is the source of the English word message,
as well as the Spanish word mensaje (with
spreading of the nasality of the initial m
to the following syllable.
The Latin suffix ‑ātĭcum is said
sometimes to have morphed to ‑agĭum
in the spelling in post-classical Latin. Others think, however, that this Late Latin
ending ‑agium is nothing but the Latinization
of the Romance suffix that was spelled ‑age
in northern Gaul and ‑atge in
southern Gaul (and ‑azgo in Castilian
Romance). One some of Romance words in ‑age are attested in Latinate form with
the ‑agium suffix. Thus, along with
the original Latin word missaticum,
source of the Old French word message,
we also find this same word written in Late Latin as messagium, but that was not a Classical Latin word, but a Latinization
of the Old French word message that
descended from Lat. missaticum by regular
sound changes and spelling adaptations.
In the varieties of Old French spoken in what is now
northern France, the suffix ‑ātĭcum
changed to ‑age, which is pronounced [aʒ] in Modern French, and these
Romance varieties created many more words that did not exist in Late Latin by
means of this suffix. English has borrowed many of these words, which also end
in the spelling ‑age, pronounced [ɪʤ]. Among the words English
has borrowed from French with this suffix we have voyage, folliage, lineage, courage, garage, and savage. Note that an English speaker has
no way of recognizing ‑age as a
suffix in English, since the ‘root’ of these words, what remains after taking
out the ending ‑age (folli‑, line‑, cour‑, gar‑, sav‑) from these words are not recognizable or at least meaningful
morphemes of English.
You may have noticed that many of the English words that end
in ‑age have Spanish cognates that
end in ‑aje, cf. viaje, follaje, linaje, coraje, garaje, and salvaje. It turns out that none of these
words are patrimonial words in Spanish. All the words in ‑aje in Spanish are borrowings from either Standard French, Southern
French (Occitan), or Catalan. These are words that ended in ‑age in northern French, and or ‑adge in Occitan or Catalan (the two are
closely related). Spanish just changed the spelling of all these endings to ‑aje. The suffix is pronounced [ˈa.xe] in modern Spanish, but it
used to be pronounced [ˈa.ʒe] (cf. Part I, Chapters 7
and 10).
By the way, the English word age is also related to the ‑āticum suffix, even though it looks just
like the suffix ‑age and nothing else.
That is because English age comes from
Old French age, from Late Latin *aetāticum, derived from Latin aetātem (nom. aetās), meaning ‘lifetime, age, generation, stage, period of life, time,
era’. The Spanish word for age, namely
edad, does not come from Late Lat. *aetāticum but, rather, from Lat. aetātem Spanish, by totally regular and predictable
changes (ae changed to e, the ‑t‑ between vowels changed to ‑d‑,
twice, the final ‑m dropped first, and
then the final ‑e dropped again before
a preceding t; cf. Part I, Chapter 10).
Both English age and Spanish edad have the same two senses just the same
as the original Latin word did: (1) number of years, as in Eng. What’s your age? / Sp. ¿Qué edad
tienes? (alternative ways to the questions
Eng. How old are you? / Sp. ¿Cuántos años tienes?) and (2) period of time, as in Middle Ages / Edad Media.
The native reflex in Castilian of the Late Latin suffix ‑āticum is ‑azgo (‑adgo in Old
Spanish), a suffix that was not as productive as its cognates were in French or
Occitan and which has not left us near as many words. The most common words with
the suffix ‑azgo in Modern Spanish are
the following:
- noviazgo ‘courtship, engagement (to marry)’, from novio/novia ‘boyfriend/girlfriend, fiancé/fiancée’)
- hallazgo ‘finding’, from hallar ‘to find’
- (rare) hartazgo ‘bellyful, satiety, satiation’, from hartar ‘to satisfy; to irritate, tire, overwhelm’; cf. hartarse ‘to stuff oneself; to get fed up with’), and
- liderazgo ‘leadership, position or duties of a leader’, a 19th century creation derived from the English loanword líder ‘leader’
There are a few other words that contain the
suffix ‑azgo in Modern Spanish and
they are all quite rare today. These are the main ones: almirantazgo ‘admiralship’, padrinazgo
‘patronage’, comadrazgo ‘godmother
relationship’, hermanazgo
‘brothership, brotherhood’ (cf. harmandad),
madrinazgo ‘godmothership’, mayorazgo ‘primogeniture’, mecenazgo ‘patronage, sponsorship’, patronazgo ‘patronage’ (cf. patronato, patrocinio), and portazgo
‘toll’ (cf. portaje, peaje).
In Italian, like in Spanish, the suffix ‑ātĭcum resulted in two different
suffixes, one patrimonial and the other one borrowed. The patrimonial reflex of
Latin ‑ātĭcum is ‑atico, or ‑àtico, a suffix which, like ‑azgo
in Spanish, is not very common in modern Italian. The other reflex of the suffix
‑ātĭcum is -àggio or -aggio, as in linguaggio ‘language’
and viaggio ‘voyage’, cognates of Spanish
lenguaje and viaje, respectively. This suffix was borrowed from Occitan, much like
Spanish ‑aje was. In Occitan the form
of the suffix was -atge, like in Catalan.
Notice that there are no learned words with the suffix ‑ātĭcum, since this was a Vulgar
and Late Latin nominal suffix only, not a Classical Latin one. But there are learned
words that come from Latin words which the adjectival ‑ā‑t‑ĭc‑us endings. As we saw earlier, this …aticus ending was a combination of several
suffixes and it could have different sources. As some point, however, it seems there
was some confusion about the analysis of these suffixes and ‑(a)tĭcus came to be applied to
non-verbal stems. Actually, most of the approximately 200 words that end in ‑atic in English and the approximately 30
words that end in ‑atical are adjectives
that come from Greek adjectives ending in …ατικός
(…atikos), which seem to be for the most
part Greek words that had stems that ended in …at‑, not necessarily a suffix, to which the adjectival suffix ‑ik‑ was added, e.g. Eng. automatic ~ Sp. automático/a (see examples in footnote l on page 1426
above).[i]
[1] An even smaller number of adjectives were
derived from nouns by what looks like a suffix ‑t‑ĭc‑us, with
a ‑t‑ and with or without other
changes or additions to the stem: dŏmestĭcus
(adj. of dŏmus ‘house’) ‘of or
belonging to the house’, ‘of or belonging to one's family; domestic, familiar,
household’; (2) rustĭcus (adj. of rūs, genitive rūris, ‘the country (as opposed to the city), lands, fields; a
country-seat, farm, estate, etc.') ‘of or belonging to the country, rural,
rustic, country’, ‘countrylike, rustic, simple, in a good or (more freq.) in a
bad sense, etc.’
Most Latin
adjectives that end in the spelling …aticus
are actually adjectives derived by means of the plain adjectival suffix ‑ĭc‑(us) attached to nouns of Greek origin whose regular stems ended in …ăt‑ (notice the short ă, not long ā) and whose nominative case wordforms ended in …ma, e.g. ărōma, gen. ărōmătis > ărōmăticus ‘aromatic’ (cf. Gk. ἀρωματικός); dogma,
gen. dogmătis > dogmătĭcus ‘dogmatic’ (cf. Gk. δογματικός); drama, gen. dramătis ‘an act, a theatrical act, a
play’ > dramātĭcus ‘dramatic, pertaining to plays’ (cf. Gk. δραματικός); pragma,
gen. pragmătis ‘a matter, affair,
business’, cf. Gk. πρᾶγμα (prâgma) > pragmātĭcus ‘skilled in business, esp. experienced in
matters of law’ (cf. Gk. πραγματικός).
All of these words have equivalent Greek adjectives that end in …ατικός (‑atikos), from which the Latin words were
borrowed. Some Greek adjectives in …ατικός (‑atikos),
however, were borrowed without borrowing the underlying noun, such as Lat. grammătĭcus and măthēmătĭcus.
Lat. grammătĭcus ‘of or belonging to grammar,
grammatical’ is a loan from Gk. γραμματικός (grammatikós) ‘knowing one’s letters, of
a good scholar, concerned with textual criticism’ and in the phrase γραμματικὴ τέχνη (grammatike tékhnē) ‘the grammatical art, skill,
craft, i.e. grammar’; this
adjective is derived by means of the adjectival suffix ‑ῐκ‑ός (-ik‑ós)
from γρᾰ́μμᾰ (grámma), gen. γρᾰ́μμᾰτος (grámmatos)
(the noun γρᾰ́μμᾰ (grámma) meant ‘that which is written, that
which is drawn, picture; a letter; (in the plural) an alphabet; writing, book’;
this noun is derived from the root of the verb γράφειν ‘to draw, etc.; to write’ and the suffix ‑μα (-ma) that formed result nouns.
Lat. măthēmătĭcus ‘of or belonging to
mathematics, mathematical’ is a loanword from Gk. μαθηματικο:ς (same meaning), which is derived from the noun
μάθημα
(máthēma), genitive μαθήματος (mathḗmatos) ‘learning, knowledge; a lesson; a
creed; astrology’. This noun was often used in the plural: μαθήμᾰτᾰ. The noun μάθημα (máthēma) is derived from the root of the
verb μᾰνθᾰ́νειν (manthánein) ‘to learn’ and the suffix ‑μα (-ma) that formed result nouns.
[i] Cf. There are over 200
words that end in ‑atic in English (http://www.morewords.com/ends-with/atic)
and 30 words that end in ‑atical (http://www.morewords.com/ends-with/atical).
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