Talk:monticellus

'Diminutive from monticulus (“small mountain”) +‎ -ellus.'

@Urszag How would you prefer having the etymology- like that, or as monticulus + -ulus? Nicodene (talk) 10:20, 29 June 2022 (UTC)

@Nicodene: Hi, if it is considered to be a derivative of monticulus (so, the result of two consecutive stages of diminutive suffixation), I would do it as monticulus + -lus. Even though -ulus/-olus/-lus all have the same ultimate origin, Wiktionary currently lemmatizes these all separately, with contracted diminutive forms ending in -llus categorized as ending in the suffix -lus. I'm not sure whether another possibility here is to analyze it as mons + a diminutive suffix -cellus: I have the impression there is no difference in meaning here from a one-step/single diminutive. Do you know whether the history of attested forms shows clearly whether monticulus is any older than monticellus?--Urszag (talk) 00:51, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

@Urszag I don't see a semantic difference either. And per the FEW, monticulus is indeed attested about a century earlier than monticellus.

Under Category:Latin words suffixed with -ellus we have more forms of that type, namely:

albellus, arcella, buccella, campanella, capsella, cistella, fabella, formella, rusticellus, *virgella

Cf.:

albulus, arcula, buccula, campanula, capsula, cistula, fabula, formula, rusticulus, virgula

The same category also shows a fair number of terms which lack a counterpart with -ulus/-a and which did not have /-n/ or /-l/ in the stem. Generally they fall under Late, Medieval, or Neo-Latin. There is at least one exception though: novellus, which is Classical. Nicodene (talk) 01:40, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

Thanks! My feeling is that these should generally be shown as from the -ulus form + -lus, unless there is a clear reason to suppose that the derivation did not involve an intermediate step in -ulus. I edited the entries for albellus, capsella, and cistella‎. "Fabella" covers two words: a single diminutive of "fābula" (not itself a diminutive), and a double diminutive of faba "bean". We don't currently have an entry for the single diminutive "făbŭla"; it looks like it existed at some point but in some cases a masculine "făbŭlus" was used instead. It seems plausible "făbella" is from "făbŭla" although this one seems a bit tricky. I'm not sure whether arcella in the sense "square landmark" and buccella in the sense "morsel" correspond to attested senses of arcula and buccula.--Urszag (talk) 16:56, 30 June 2022 (UTC)

@Urszag Yes, it seems that arca and bucca do have the required senses, but their first-order diminutives do not. Buccella occurs in Late Latin, by which point -ellus appears to have been achieving 'independence' as a suffix. Arcella, on the other hand, is found in the writings of Frontinus (first century CE). Perhaps arcula did have the sense of 'landmark' but was simply not recorded as such by Lewis & Short, or not attested as such in any extant document.

I'll see what I can find out about this făbula. Nicodene (talk) 06:37, 3 July 2022 (UTC)