Talk:ciotto

'via a Gallo-Italic language'

While that may help explain the /tʃ/, it invites the question of why there's a geminate /tt/ at all. Nicodene (talk) 01:35, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

@Nicodene: Thought of that. /kaute/ > /tʃɔde/ > /tʃɔd/ > /tʃɔt/, with final-obstruent devoicing. This explains both why /t/ isn't voiced and also why it's geminate: Italian doesn't have final obstruents, and when it borrows them from other languages it interprets them as geminates, to match the syllable structure: top is /ˈtɔppə/ (top + -ino = toppino 'small top'), sud is /ˈsuddə/ (Sud Italia /ˌsuddiˈtalja/), barre and tramme are also Italianized version of bar and tram, now considered dialectal. Even Italian per might be pronunced /ˈperrə/ prepausally or before hesitation. Alternatively, for an Italian speaker with /tt ~ t ~ d/ distinction, the /t/ of a language that has only /t ~ d/ distinction, usually sounds closer to Italian /tt/ than /t/.

Though Gallo-Italic languages seem to tend to make that -t fall, AIS map 27 il suo cognato shows a significant amount of places where the -t in Gallo-Italic, at least in his times, survived.

The semantic shift is pretty weird, and it magically became masculine. Moreover Pianigiani has written some etymologies worthy of being under the user contributions of Daco Romans of the East, his work is a century old after all. Still, the theory phonologically checks out, and it's better than a bland 'uncertain'. Catonif (talk) 10:04, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

@Catonif Interesting that Italian adopts modern English words that way, but I'm not sure that is necessarily so for medieval borrowings from Gallo-Italic. I suppose if some form like *ciòt does exist, with the right meaning and not as a recent import from Standard Italian, this etymology may work despite the remaining hurdles (gender change and drastic size reduction). Tantalizingly, we have a Romanian ciot, though that is also of unclear origin. Nicodene (talk) 10:29, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

There is also the matter of the added final vowel in modern Italian being a schwa, according to what you said, but not /-o/, as proposed here with ciotto. Nicodene (talk) 10:40, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

@Nicodene: The final schwa is of course a xenophoneme in recent unadapted borrowings, in older borrowings the final vowel adapted on /-a -e -o/ (compare gioia, broccio, sovente, etc). /-o/ here would have been clearly taken because of its masculinity. On dialettando.com (not the most academic source, but, alas, one works with what he's got) there's a reference of Romagnol (Ravenna) zòtt. I don't think it's a borrowing since Italian ciotto without the -lo is mostly unheard of, and the realization as z- looks pretty native. Romanian is probably unrelated, or at least I hope so... I mean, we could still mention it, but it looks a bit like a stretch. Catonif (talk) 11:52, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

The source for zòtt on dialettando.com is apperently Vocabolario romagnolo-italiano by Antonio Morri (1840). Catonif (talk) 14:08, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Very nice! Nicodene (talk) 18:01, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

Some potentially useful comments by one Emanuele Ventura (in La «Chirurgia Magna» di Bruno da Longobucco in volgare): https://imgur.com/a/ia3HvP0. Nicodene (talk) 10:33, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

@BandiniRaffaele2 can you help us here? What would be the title of the Romagnol entry for zòtt (“pebble”) with the current spelling guidelines? Thank you. Catonif (talk) 21:33, 30 August 2022 (UTC)

For Adelmo Masotti’s Vocabolario romagnolo-italiano (of Ravennate Romagnol) it is ẓòt but there are several spellings according to different authors and criteria. BandiniRaffaele2 (talk) 04:49, 31 August 2022 (UTC)

Thanks for making the page. :) Catonif (talk) 10:03, 31 August 2022 (UTC)