Talk:bășică

*vēssīca or *vēxīca

@Word dewd544 Yes it does seem that both options work phonologically: cf. Latin exīre, tussīre > ieși, tuși.

I was inclined to favour *vexica on account of the other Romance forms. Venetian vesiga might seem to suggest an older *vessica, but -s- is the regular outcome of Latin /-ks-/ as well, as in coxa, exīre > Venetian cosa, isir. So it could be either *vexica or *vessica in that case, as with Romanian.

On the other hand, French has vessie (not *voissie), which points to *vessica. Yet nearby Walloon shows a palatalized outcome in vexheye (where ⟨xh⟩ stands for /ʃ/), which points to *vexica.

Perhaps best to posit an early *vessica~vexica variation across the board. Nicodene (talk) 21:58, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

Actually Latin -x- often becomes -ps- in Romanian so that's why I think in this case vessica makes more sense (compare Romanian coapsă from Latin coxa, Romanian frapsăn, dialectal variant of frasin, from fraxinus, cf. Aromanian frapsin; Romanian toapsec and topseca from toxicum and toxicare), at least for Eastern Romance. Similar to how Latin -ct- typically yields -pt- in Romanian. Meanwhile, -ss- to -ș- is normal. However there are exceptions, like măsea, mătase, osânză. Unless these came from a local Vulgar Latin variant that was already just -s- rather than -x-. Word dewd544 (talk) 23:53, 17 June 2022 (UTC)

@Word dewd544 Quite a few verb forms show /s/ as well, such as țese, lăsa, zise, duse < texere, laxāre, dīxit, dūxit. Perhaps a following front vowel increases the likelihood of this outcome.

Especially relevant are ieși, leșie < exīre, lixīva, as they both started out with the /ksiː/ sequence that we would have had in *vēxīca, and both likewise ended up with /ʃi/.

It occurs to me now, though, that this can simply reflect the Romanian habit of palatalizing /s/ before /i/, as in și, șir, plăși, rășină, bășină.

In other words, ieși, leșie, bășică can easily reflect older *esíre, *lesíva, *besíca. Which just returns us to square one, I suppose.

That aside, what do you think of having a *vessica~vexica variation at the Proto-Romance level? Nicodene (talk) 02:05, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

I think the palatization of /s/ before /i/ does make more sense as a general rule for Romanian. In regards to the variations for vesica, I'm not sure... hard to say. Maybe *vessica isn't really necessary after all. Word dewd544 (talk) 02:13, 18 June 2022 (UTC)

The former is attested. Kwékwlos (talk) 17:30, 29 March 2023 (UTC)