Final -s in Spanish dios & Portuguese deus

[Grimalkin]

How come the Spanish and Portuguese words for God (dios and deus) have a final -s in the singular? As far as I know, this final -s isn't found in any other Romance language. Is it a reborrowing from Classical Latin or just an irregular development?

[alice]

Possibly it's a learnèd development; the Latin Deus has final /s/ too, and such a word would have been resistant to changes when uttered in church. Of course, this doesn't explain the French and Italian developments, but never mind.

[David McCann]

The interaction between Latin and Romance could get very complicated.

Latin was pronounced like the vernacular, especially before Charlemagne's reforms. In the early Middle Ages, Italians would not have pronounced the -s even when they they read Latin.

The old Spanish and Portuguese pronunciations would have been close enough to the Lain to make it easy switch from one to another, while the greater vowel change in French would make that less likely.

But these things never go by rule. The French siècle has the -ie- of French but the -cl- of Vulgar latin.

[Grimalkin]

Okay, that makes sense. If I'm not mistaken, the early Western Romance form of /deus/ would have been */deo/, because the accusative ending prevailed and the final /m/ was lost. So early Spanish and Portuguese must have 're-learnt' the final /s/ due to interaction with Classical Latin

Interestingly, in Galician it's deus, and it's déu in Catalan. Then again, isn't Catalan supposed to be more closely related to French than to Spanish?

Possibly it's a learnèd development; the Latin Deus has final /s/ too, and such a word would have been resistant to changes when uttered in church. Of course, this doesn't explain the French and Italian developments, but never mind.

I considered that as a possibility but could that really happen, I wonder. I mean, priests would have spoken only Latin in church, but would that have been enough to prevent the Eternal name of the LORD from changing in Spain and Portugal?

[Travis B.]

Interestingly, in Galician it's deus, and it's déu in Catalan. Then again, isn't Catalan supposed to be more closely related to French than to Spanish?

Catalan is essentially a sister language to Occitan, both being descended from Old Occitan, if not essentially a group of Occitan dialects that are not called Occitan for political reasons; I would not call it Ibero-Romance at all, even though for some inexplicable reason some seem to insist on calling it that.

[Soap]

Ivw heard some skepticism about the accusatives, maybe wait for more responses in this thread for more info.

Sp also has espiritu (accent over the i) for spirit; maybve this is also irregular?

[Beli Orao]

As far as I know, this final -s isn't found in any other Romance language.

Sardinian also has déus (as well as corpus, tempus...) and something tells me that this isn't a reborrowed form.

[Soap]

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1455349 suggests that corpus and tempus might be words that had -s even in the accusative in the original Latin. And they have derived forms with -or- (temporal, corpor(e)al). But Deus apparently is not like those others.

[Grimalkin]

Indeed, corpus and tempus were 3rd declension neuters in Latin, so their accusative forms were identical to the nominative. Also, French has corps and temps but the final -s in the orthography could be a Latinisation.

[Soap]

Do they pronounce the -s when the next word begins with a vowel?

[Skomakar'n]

Do they pronounce the -s when the next word begins with a vowel?

Why wouldn't they?

[Yng]

Do they pronounce the -s when the next word begins with a vowel?

Why wouldn't they?

In French, some final letters are usually silent, except when followed by a vowel in certain situations, in which case they're usually pronounced. The 'usually' there refers to the large number of exceptions.

[Hakaku]

Do they pronounce the -s when the next word begins with a vowel?

In the word temps, the final -s is pronounced when followed by word beginning with a vowel: de temps en temps /d@tA~zA~tA~/ (from time to time). As for corps, the -s remains silent, likely because the final -r takes precedence: corps à corps /kORakOr/ (lit. body to body). In both cases the 'p' was reintroduced in spelling.

[Beli Orao]

http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=1455349 suggests that corpus and tempus might be words that had -s even in the accusative in the original Latin. And they have derived forms with -or- (temporal, corpor(e)al). But Deus apparently is not like those others.

But neither is lapis, yet it yielded lápiz, lapis, llapis, appisi (unless these forms are learned, which I doubt)

[linguoboy]

I would not call it Ibero-Romance at all, even though for some inexplicable reason some seem to insist on calling it that.

Um, because it's spoken in Iberia?

Catalan's "un-Iberianness" is usually established by contrasting it to Castilian. But Castilian is really the odd man out on the peninsula, innovating (particularly in phonology) where all the other varieties have remained more conservative.

But neither is lapis, yet it yielded lápiz, lapis, llapis, appisi (unless these forms are learned, which I doubt)

Why doubt it prima facie? It's not like pencils are a basic tool of civilisation. The GREC calls llapis a 17th-century borrowing from Italian. I don't have an Italian etymological dictionary to hand to check when Italian lapis first appeared with its present meaning, but there's no compelling reason why it couldn't be a Renaissance borrowing from Latin.

[Grimalkin]

But neither is lapis, yet it yielded lápiz, lapis, llapis, appisi (unless these forms are learned, which I doubt)

Why doubt it prima facie? It's not like pencils are a basic tool of civilisation. The GREC calls llapis a 17th-century borrowing from Italian. I don't have an Italian etymological dictionary to hand to check when Italian lapis first appeared with its present meaning, but there's no compelling reason why it couldn't be a Renaissance borrowing from Latin.

I think you're right. After all, final /s/ disappeared in Italian, so I'm certain lapis is a loanword from Latin. There is the word lapide in Italian, meaning 'tombstone' or 'tablet', which looks like a native reflex of Latin lapis. (Of course, it would have derived from the accusative form, lapidem.) Also, Spanish lápida.

In conclusion: lapis isn't an example of final singular -s being natively retained in Western Romance.