Books by Benedicte Nielsen Whitehead
Latin instrument nouns in *-lo-, *-slo- and *-tlo-: The relationship between three Indo-European ... more Latin instrument nouns in *-lo-, *-slo- and *-tlo-: The relationship between three Indo-European nominal suffixes. Unpublished master's thesis, University of Copenhagen 1998.
Papers by Benedicte Nielsen Whitehead
Museum Tusculanum Press eBooks, 2012
Cambridge University Press eBooks, May 11, 2023
Glotta, Sep 1, 2013
Apuleius (Met 10.21.8) relates a tender kiss that is neither like ‘the money-seeking kisses of th... more Apuleius (Met 10.21.8) relates a tender kiss that is neither like ‘the money-seeking kisses of the prostitutes, nor like the moneywithholding(?) kisses of the punters’: “basiola vel meretricum poscinummia vel adventorum negatinummia”. This passage contains two compound adjectives, poscinummius and negatinummius, of an unusual structure; they would appear to be verbal government compounds of a type that displays a deverbal first member, followed by a noun that represents the object of the verb contained in the first member. Such formations, for which I suggest the shorthand PICKPOCKET compounds, are rare in Classical Latin: the critical and probably exhaustive survey of Bork (1990: 165–258) boils the inventory down to approximately 26 examples, of which the present author (2012: 114–151) suggests discarding at least 10; some of these will be discussed below. However, the type is characteristic of the Romance languages from the earliest attestations onwards and is still productive in modern Romance, mainly in the form of instrument nouns; thus Fr. porte-monnaie ‘wallet’, It. batti-carne ‘meat-hammer’, Sp. abrelatas ‘can-opener’, Pt. guardachuva ‘umbrella’. This pattern of attestation allows us to assume that the type was a token of late and spoken Latin, the
In: Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard Hansen, Adam Hyllested, Anders Richard Jørgensen & al. (e... more In: Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard Hansen, Adam Hyllested, Anders Richard Jørgensen & al. (eds.): Usque ad radices. Indo-European studies in honour of Birgit Anette Olsen (Copenhagen Studies in Indo-European 8). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum.
This thesis discusses the development in Proto–Indo–European, Latin and Romance of a word–formati... more This thesis discusses the development in Proto–Indo–European, Latin and Romance of a word–formation pattern which the most adequate terminology in use dubs ‘verbal government compounds with a governing first member’; I use the shorthand ‘pickpocket compounds’. The first member of such compounds derives from a verb, while the second mostly represents its direct object: thus English pickpocket. Most English examples are functionally agent–nouns, referring to the agent of the implied verbal act. Nevertheless, they lack a suffix indicating this. By contrast, the more prolific type of compound agent–noun, represented by truck–driver, has the deverbal member second and carries an agentive suffix, ‑er. Pickpocket compounds are attested in early strata of Greek and Indo–Iranian and in medieval strata of Germanic, Slavic and Romance. Latin has around a dozen examples. The scholarly debate, continued in this thesis, has been centred round two issues: (1) the morphological make–up of the type ...
Revue Romane / Langue et littérature. International Journal of Romance Languages and Literatures, 2012
It is generally held that Latin word-final, post-tonic -ē yielded *-e in Proto-Romance, even if s... more It is generally held that Latin word-final, post-tonic -ē yielded *-e in Proto-Romance, even if secure attestations are lacking.However, here it is suggested that a number of forms thought to instantiate analogical replacement of expected *-e with -i are in fact phonologically regular, thus revealing that the real outcome of Lat. -ē was PR *-i.2 The relevant forms are: a small handful of adverbs: It. oggi ‘today’ < hodiē, Rm. azi ‘today’ < hac diē, It./As. tardi ‘late’ < tardē, It. lungi/As. lloñi ‘far’ < longē; the 2sg. imperative of Italian, Old Portuguese and Asturian e-verbs (It. bevi/OPt. bive (with metaphony)/As. bebi ‘drink!’) as well as the Romanian 2sg. imperatives in -i (Rm. vezi ‘see!’ cazi ‘fall!’, etc.). This hypothesis renders superfluous a number of poorly understood analogies needed to explain these forms and sheds new light on the enigmatic Romanian imperative in -i and its hitherto unexplained association with transitivity.
Glotta, 2013
Apuleius (Met 10.21.8) relates a tender kiss that is neither like ‘the money-seeking kisses of th... more Apuleius (Met 10.21.8) relates a tender kiss that is neither like ‘the money-seeking kisses of the prostitutes, nor like the moneywithholding(?) kisses of the punters’: “basiola vel meretricum poscinummia vel adventorum negatinummia”. This passage contains two compound adjectives, poscinummius and negatinummius, of an unusual structure; they would appear to be verbal government compounds of a type that displays a deverbal first member, followed by a noun that represents the object of the verb contained in the first member. Such formations, for which I suggest the shorthand PICKPOCKET compounds, are rare in Classical Latin: the critical and probably exhaustive survey of Bork (1990: 165–258) boils the inventory down to approximately 26 examples, of which the present author (2012: 114–151) suggests discarding at least 10; some of these will be discussed below. However, the type is characteristic of the Romance languages from the earliest attestations onwards and is still productive in modern Romance, mainly in the form of instrument nouns; thus Fr. porte-monnaie ‘wallet’, It. batti-carne ‘meat-hammer’, Sp. abrelatas ‘can-opener’, Pt. guardachuva ‘umbrella’. This pattern of attestation allows us to assume that the type was a token of late and spoken Latin, the
Farnah. Indo-Iranian and Indo-European Studies in honor of Sasha Lubotsky Beech Stave Press , 2018
The PIE word for ‘cow’ is analyzed as a hysterodynamic u-stem, derived from PIE *gʷeh₃-.
In: Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard Hansen, Adam Hyllested, Anders Richard Jørgensen & al. (eds.): Us... more In: Bjarne Simmelkjær Sandgaard Hansen, Adam Hyllested, Anders Richard Jørgensen & al. (eds.): Usque ad radices. Indo-European studies in honour of Birgit Anette Olsen (Copenhagen Studies in Indo-European 8). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum.
In: Adam Hyllested, Benedicte Nielsen Whitehead, Thomas Olander & Birgit Anette Olsen (eds.): Lan... more In: Adam Hyllested, Benedicte Nielsen Whitehead, Thomas Olander & Birgit Anette Olsen (eds.): Language and prehistory of the Indo-European peoples: A cross-disciplinary perspective. (Copenhagen Studies in Indo-European 7). Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum, 1–8.
Kratylos 59, pp. 257-265, 2014
Revue Romane 47:2, pp. 283-304, 2012
Proceedings of the 23rd annual UCLA Indo-European conference. October 28th and 29th, 2011, 2013
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Books by Benedicte Nielsen Whitehead
Papers by Benedicte Nielsen Whitehead