Disputatio:Onomatopoeia

Neander, would you confer Animalium soni. These sounds are attested. I'm not doubting your source, I've just never seen some of the sounds you've listed. --Ioscius ^(disp) 04:32, 22 Augusti 2007 (UTC)

Iosci, I didn't notice Animalium soni (a fine piece of work!). You're right, my animal cries need further philological work. Re cat, I picked gnaulare from the Lexicon Finnico-Latino-Finnicum by Reijo Pitkäranta. I hadn't the time to check it out, though the verb looked very Italian. It seems as though we don't know how the old Romans said the cat says. The verb felire seems to refer only to panthers. Walther von Wartburg's Französisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch (Eine Darstellung des galloromanischen Sprachschatzes) 6:II [1967], 66sqq kind of reconstructs miau- for Common Romance, and profecto I'm sure Cicero would scarcely have sniffed at somebody saying cattus miaulat. But I took the cat away, because I'm not sure what kind of creature the feles referred to. Do you have further worries about Latin? The problem is also that κοάζει is, as a matter of philological fact, καθαρεύουσα Greek. Aristophanes has κοάξ κοάξ. It's an accidental fact that the verb isn't attested.

Rana coaxat is a philologically well-attested verb. Are you sure caxare in Animalium soni is ok? --Neander 21:52, 22 Augusti 2007 (UTC)

Let me check on caxare. You make a fine point about the Greek, so let me double check.

Grundire was the other one. I have seen grunnire, and grudire, or either with a c instead of g, but I have not seen grundire itself.

Well, App.Probi warns grundio non grunnio, and Diomedes (gramm.. 1,383,21) says "grunnit porcus" dicimus; veteres grundire dicebant. The obvious conclusion from this is that both variants existed as sociolinguistically conditioned choices; cf. dispendite/dispennite (Plautus), tenditur / tennitur (Terentius), verecundus / verecunnus (Pompeii; pun?) ... grundio (Varro) / grunnio. --Neander 00:16, 23 Augusti 2007 (UTC)

I have added grundire + <ref>Diomedes</ref> --Ioscius ^(disp) 01:43, 23 Augusti 2007 (UTC)

As for cats, Annula Llewellyn told me maumare, but I didn't dare question her source. Gnaulare looks improbable at first glance, I wonder where Reijo got it. Let me do a little hunting. --Ioscius ^(disp) 23:29, 22 Augusti 2007 (UTC)

Well, in other good news, I found a huge list of sounds I copied down from Raimundus' book Guide to Latin Conversation (1892). Let me add these, and then see where we are.--Ioscius ^(disp) 23:51, 22 Augusti 2007 (UTC)

Oh yeah, and this new index definitely says coaxare.--Ioscius ^(disp) 23:52, 22 Augusti 2007 (UTC)

On cats see Disputatio:Feles. I'm curious about the history of that gnaulare though. --Iustinus 23:36, 22 Augusti 2007 (UTC)

As I said there, I have seen both active and deponent forms of baubor, and therefore suspect the same would be true for maumor.

Iustine, Walther v. Wartburg has amassed and arranged practically all dialectal variants of miaowing in Romance languages, inter alia those beginning with gnau-. If I remember correctly, also Old French has it (and Italian dialects, of course). Technically, we don't really hear the first consonant of what a cat "says", but because the cat's voicing begins with (what we think is) a bilabial articulatry position, we kind of conclude, also from the nasal-ish quality of what follows, that there must be m(i)- in the onset, or n(i)-, if the nasality gets focussed on.

I have found no source for maumare. May be Annula Llewellyn has coined it herself? Be that as it may, I like it (as I like maulare, too :-). --Neander 01:09, 23 Augusti 2007 (UTC)

Knowing Annula, I doubt she coined it. My guess is she heard Father Foster say it, and just accepted it as dei verbum. I can email her, but I think she may be in Rome . . . --Ioscius ^(disp) 01:30, 23 Augusti 2007 (UTC)

Ok, I emailed her.--Ioscius ^(disp) 01:40, 23 Augusti 2007 (UTC)

It'd be nice indeed to know where Annula got it from, primarily because I'm interested in memetic transmission of ideas, i.e. mechanisms of conventionalisation.

Say more about this in my talk page. Are you writing a paper? I'm curious, too.--Ioscius ^(disp) 02:19, 23 Augusti 2007 (UTC)

(Well, if Father Foster is Annula's source, the next question might be, where did he get it from ... Hope this isn't too iconoclastic!) But somehow I tend to think onomatopoeia is a locus through which any language gets new expressive riches, maybe including Latin, even nowadays ... --Neander 02:00, 23 Augusti 2007 (UTC)

She's usually good about email if she's in a place where they actually have it, so I should know soon.

Was there ever a resolution for this? I believe I read somewhere that the Romans didn't really like cats as pets, and that those who did worshipped them "like those dirty Egyptians!" I've been using maumare (v.), but perhaps I should just use something like vociferatio felis, quae ut "mau" vel "miau" audiuntur. --Robert.Baruch 00:46, 18 Aprilis 2010 (UTC)

Wow good question, Robert. I'd rather not be so dubiously cited at Animalium soni so I guess I should find an actual source... --Ioscius ^∞ 16:17, 18 Aprilis 2010 (UTC)

In "Conversational Latin for Oral Proficiency" (Traupman, 4 ed), chap XVI: Animals, he gives meow = felio, -ire, purr (v) = murmurare, purr (n) = murmur, -uris. Now, honestly, I don't know if he just made that up, considering that felire is whatever sound a leopard makes. I don't think there ever was a word, considering the disdain the Romans and Medieval Europeans had of cats.

Also murmurare = purr in Minimus II Chap 2. --Robert.Baruch 16:59, 18 Aprilis 2010 (UTC)

This reminds me of one of my favorite Calvin and Hobbes cartoons. Calvin says to Hobbes "Wanna go spelunking?", to which Hobbes replies "There aren't any caves around here". Calvin counters "You don't need caves to go spelunking, just big rocks". Hobbes^! scratches his head. In the final panel, they are both down at a lake heaving huge rocks into the water, the sound of which, of course, is a giant SPEE-LUNK. Such a good comic. --Ioscius ^(disp) 02:19, 23 Augusti 2007 (UTC)

Anglice, canis imprimis barks

Re:

Animal Latine Graece Theodisce Anglice Finnice

Canis baubat(ur) βαύζει bellt bays haukkuu

Anglice, canis imprimis barks. Is quoque bays et howls et growls, sed verbum usitatum superest bark. IacobusAmor 01:27, 12 Septembris 2007 (UTC)

Ita quidem! Et re vera primo "barks" scripsi. Sed paulo post verbum "bays" elegi potissimum quia diphthongi causa cum verbis aliarum quarundam linguarum (baubat, βαύζει, quin etiam haukkuu) melius consonare videtur (vel auditur :-) . Facile tibi concedo me in hac re effecisse, ut auditio rationem superaret. Credin vero verbo "bays" deleto "barks" scribendum esse? Martinus Neander 02:03, 12 Septembris 2007 (UTC)

Mihi quidem placet dicere barks pro "latrat," et bays pro "baubatur." Nescio autem num fontes classici hoc discrimen exactum faciant. --Iustinus 02:34, 12 Septembris 2007 (UTC)

Nihilominus, verbum bark est solitum et frequens; verba altera sunt insolita et infrequentia. Vide Google:

"dog barks" 253,000

"dog howls" 43,400

"dog growls" 29,600

"dog cries" 12,400

"dog snarls" 2,860

"dog yaps" 1,470

"dog yelps" 671

"dog snaps" 553

"dog bays" 486

"dog yips" 462

Verba bay et yip sunt rarissima. IacobusAmor 12:12, 12 Septembris 2007 (UTC)

some dogs bay more than others. Hounds and beagles bay, for sure.--Ioscius ^(disp) 12:59, 12 Septembris 2007 (UTC)

That's what they may say! but English-speakers say otherwise; see Google:

"beagle barks" 1,110

"beagle bays" 49

"hound barks" 368

"hound bays" 233

Btw, to my lights, hound is (1) an old-sounding synonym for dog, and (2) any of numerous ill-defined breeds of droopy-eared dog especially good for tracking. Our ordinary term is dog: hound is stylistically marked & rare, and that's perhaps why it attracts the rare verb bay (instead of the common verb bark); beagle isn't rare, so it doesn't benefit from such attraction. Also: hound is a cognate of canis, but dog apparently isn't. IacobusAmor 13:22, 12 Septembris 2007 (UTC)

Sure, originally a synonym, but now that it's not, it refers to a specific strata of breeds. Must also be regional. In my neck of the woods (where I grew up, not where I live which is now just 20 minutes at most from Iacobus noster), hounds absolutely bay or howl, and never bark.--Ioscius ^(disp) 18:21, 12 Septembris 2007 (UTC)

What a dog-matic discussion!     :-)     --Neander 10:58, 13 Septembris 2007 (UTC)

Table: (1) order of columns + (2) Finnish

(1) The columns may not be in the best order: put the Romance languages closer to the Latin by shifting the German & English rightward. (2) All the listed languages except Finnish are Indo-European languages. Finnish is as related to the other listed languages as are Basque & Navajo & Sāmoan. What's the point of including Finnish but excluding Basque & Navajo & Sāmoan? (For example.) IacobusAmor 11:57, 12 Septembris 2007 (UTC)

ad (1): Agreed. Anybody's free to do the shifting.

ad (2): The point is simply that the undersigned happens to know Finnish. It would be nice to include a wide variety of languages in this page, but the table format should probably be thought over. Everybody, please, add what you consider interesting from the pov of onomatopoeia in languages in the world. The objective qualities of sounds and noises around us are more or less the same, yet people tend to "hear" them differently, which suggests that perception isn't what's done directly; cultural conventions seem to be involved. This is of course no novelty, but comparative onomatopoeia would provide empirical instances to such a discussion. Neander 12:40, 12 Septembris 2007 (UTC)