Question about Mallorcan Catalan

[Particles the Greek]

I have in front of me a tile from the village of Valdemossa bearing an image from the life of the patron saint and the text "Santa Catalina Thomas pregau per nosaltres". What exactly is "pregau"? Obviously it's a form of "pregar", but none of my sources can tell me which one.

[Dewrad]

Second person plural of the present indicative, used as an imperative.

[linguoboy]

Second person plural of the present indicative, used as an imperative.

I.e., the equivalent of Standard Catalan pregueu.

Use of vós as a polite form of address comparable to French vous used to be widespread in Catalan.

[Particles the Greek]

I thought it might have been a reflex of the preterite precavit... anyway, thanks for plugging an annoying gap in my knowledge

[Dewrad]

I thought it might have been a reflex of the preterite precavit... anyway, thanks for plugging an annoying gap in my knowledge

On account of being fucked up, Catalan changes mediaeval word-final [ts] into [w]. So it's a regular reflex of *precātis.

[linguoboy]

I thought it might have been a reflex of the preterite precavit...

AFAIK, that yields pregà in all varieties (not that it sees much use these days).

[hwhatting]

On account of being fucked up, Catalan changes mediaeval word-final [ts] into [w]. So it's a regular reflex of *precātis.

That's quite an unusual sound change. Are there any attested intermediate steps?

[linguoboy]

Was it [ts], Dewrad, or was it [dz]? Because we also have nonfinal examples like raó < RATIONE(M) and treure < TRACERE where the segment was definitely voiced. I could be wrong (it's been a while since I read up on these things), but I thought final devoicing postdated loss of /dz/.

[Dewrad]

On reflection, it was most likely something like [dz]: final devoicing occured independently in both Occitan and Catalan and must have postdated the [dz] > [w] change in Catalan.

[Nortaneous]

didn't dz merge with ð before > w

[Thry]

My conlang has that, but I think Catalan has more like d > ð > d > t actually. (vert, ciutat, parlat?)

Also treure is analogized with treu from *tracit (traz), linguoboy, afaik, so not a real good example: middle voiced -z- tended to ellide, like in fer or dir (fazer, dizer).

[R.Rusanov]

maybe dh>w only word finally?

[Thry]

Unusual development of early /(d)z/, resulting from merger of Proto-Western-Romance /ð/ (from intervocalic -d-) and /dz/ (from intervocalic -ty-, -c(e)-, -c(i)-); see note above about a similar merger in Occitan. In early Old Catalan, became /w/ finally or before a consonant, remained as /(d)z/ between vowels. In later Old Catalan, /(d)z/ lost between vowels:

pedem 'foot' → peu
crucem 'cross' → creu, crēdit 'he believes' → (ell) creu
Verbs in second-person plural ending in -tis: mirātis 'you (pl.) look' → *miratz → mirau → mireu/mirau
ratiōnem 'reason' → *razó → raó
vicīnum 'neighbor' → *vezí → veí
recipere 'to receive' → *rezebre → rebre

Common features Gallo-Romance languages

Loss of final unstressed vowels except -a (mūrum 'wall' → *muro → mur, flōrem 'flower' → flor); cf. the maintenance of all final vowels except -e in Spanish and Portuguese, e.g. muro but flor; Italo-Romance maintains all final vowels (Italian muro, fiore). The resulting final voiced obstruents undergo devoicing: frigidvs ('cold') → fred [ˈfɾɛt] or [ˈfɾet].

Yeah, upon second thought maybe simply d > t finally and both dh and dz > w finally (final dh from earlier intervocal -d-).