Another aha! moment came together this morning, having percolated all week. It was a convergence of a student's innocent question, a local community Spanish class, a Latin seminar, a solid weekend of research, and a scholarly conversation with colleagues over the course of a week. This morning, it led to my hypothesis. The student's question was quiet and simple: "Is the base of <representation> <s>? The question grazed my brain, not entering at that particular moment. In fact, I wrote a complete blog post about the first question the student asked, "Why isn't there a <z> in <represent>? That piece of writing sparked a bigger idea, though. Let me rewind to Thursday a week ago. In my community education Spanish class, the teacher spoke about "elision." In a Spanish sentence, if you have a vowel at the end of a word, and a vowel at the beginning of the next word, the vowels elide, or become one. For instance, the phrase, "¿<Qué es eso>? becomes, in effect, ¿/Quéseso/?" when it is pronounced. I had also learned, a few weeks prior, about the contraction of <a>+ <el> which becomes <al>, meaning "to him." On the next Saturday, I took one of a series of classes with a group of scholars, studying Latin poetry--specifically this day, Lucretius', De Rerum Natura. Here is an excerpt: ...multa elementa vides multis communia verbis, cum tamen inter se versus ac verba necessest confiteare et re et sonitu distare sonanti... Translated here as... "many elements common to many words, although you must confess that lines and words differ one from another both in meaning and in the sound of their soundings." Notice that the two words <necesse+ est--->necessest> are pushed together in an elided compound, the poet's choice here. The week prior, elision was discussed, but I was not ready to hear it, and it simply washed over me, seeding itself somewhere in my brain, ready for the Spanish class later in the week. I had spent all day before the Latin class, and the rest of the day after, immersed in a scholar's pursuit of a matrix for <represent>. The student's question niggled (caused "slight but persistent annoyance, discomfort, or anxiety") at the back of my mind: "Could the the base be <s>?" The student and I had been working through matrix after matrix over the last several months, collecting prefixes, bases, and suffixes, elements that the student had clearly internalized. We looked at a number of possible analyses of the word <represent>, and at that moment, I was not ready to understand how that could be. Then I asked the question in a group of scholars, "How is <represent> analyzed? I had discovered that its etymology was *<re + present> from <prae> "before" + <esse> "to be", but I felt like I was missing something, and there were other topics being discussed, so it kind of washed over the group. However, later that evening, a colleague wrote to me, saying that she had long ago explored the words <absent> and <absence>, sensing also that the prefix <ab> left wanting the question of the base. She proposed at the time <abs + ent> and <abs+ence>. It wasn't a completely satisfying matrix to her, so my earlier question brought her matrix back to the surface. Here are the notes I jotted down before bed last night: Food for thought:
This morning I woke with a start and started ruminating on a dream I had, "Is <s> the base of <represent>? I lay there thinking, "Elision, contraction...<re> + <pre> + <s> + <ent>. Yes!...Maybe!" The sense and meaning of the <s> is "to be!" If you are "present" or "present something", you "are before" someone, or "are in front of" them. If you are "absent," you "are away from." Oh, my goodness! Today, I met again with my colleagues in scholarship, and we took a deep dive, exploring the evidence. We talked about reconceptualization and the influence of orators and scholars (Caesar for one) in the creation of new words to filll a void in the language. I was filled with wonder at how a simple question led to such a rich discussion in the company of other scholars. In summary, an innocent question from a student posed to a curious teacher, researched thoroughly, and shared and discussed in a group of scholars lends credence to this hypothesis. It might not have happened at all were I not immersed in Latin, Spanish, scholarly conversations, linguistics, etymology, morphology, and, yes, phonology. I also spent time in the company of other scholars actively parsing the evidence and looking at suggestions of other words to explore in the future; it was an afternoon well spent. In light of the research, I propose a new matrix. Talk among yourselves. I'm gonna get a cup of tea. Resources: Etymonline.com Loebclassics library A Band of Scholars ❤️
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