Przemysław Dębowiak

The aim of the paper is to analyse, in a comparative perspective, the augmentatives in Portuguese and Romanian, two Romance languages traditionally called peripheral. As theoretical framework, some remarks on the phenomenon of evaluative derivation in general, and the augmentative one in particular, are presented. Different ways of forming evaluative derivatives, as well as the semantic values they normally convey, are mentioned. Furthermore, the mechanisms of the augmentative derivation in Portuguese and Romanian are analysed. Repertories of augmentative suffixes existing in both languages are depicted with an explanation of their origin and primitive semantic motivation. Their other functions and productivity are mentioned too. Also the process of lexicalization of augmentative derivatives is referred to on this regard. Based on this data, similarities, analogies and differences that can be observed in the field of evaluative morphology of both linguistic systems are pointed out. 

The article deals with French words coming from Latin diminutives. The corpus, based mainly on the Reino Hakamies’ work (Étude sur l’origine et l’évolution du diminutif latin et sa survie dans les langues romanes, Helsinki, 1951) that has been verified and completed, includes 184 terms. It is shown that diminutives lose their original meaning, taking the sense of the primitive which has not survived (e.g. soleil ‘sun’ ← *sōlĭcŭlus, aiguille ‘needle’ ← *acūcŭla, while sōl and acŭs → ø). Sometimes they have been preserved next to the primitives, but with a particular meaning (e.g. chapelle ‘chapel’ ← cappella, chapeau ‘hat’ ← cappellus, while cappa → chap(p)e ‘cloak’). The purpose of the article is to point out some examples of Latin diminutives inherited in French and to characterise not only their historical development from the semantic and formal point of view, but also the evolution of their non-diminutive primitives.

Is French fou ‘bishop’ really fou ‘demented’? Chessmen’s names in Romance languages.
The purpose of the paper is to present and explain the etymology of some chess terms (‘chess’, ‘checkmate’) and the chessmen’s names (‘king’, ‘queen’, ‘bishop’, ‘knight’, ‘rook’ and ‘pawn’) in seven Romance languages. Numerous words referring to chess in Portuguese, Galician, Spanish, Catalan, French, Italian and Romanian are analysed and compared so as to show their common history and some interesting linguistic facts that occurred during their formation.

The question put in the title comes from polemics and discussions going on in Portugal on the subject of the recent Portuguese writing reform (1990). Its long legislation process has only finished in the last years. A concise history of the Portuguese language’s orthography and changes introduced by the reform, purposing an unification of the European and Brazilian Portuguese writing, are presented in the paper. Afterwards, based on Portuguese and global press extracts from 2004–2009, comes an analysis and a critique of the arguments adduced by partisans of the reform, explaining its legitimacy and advantages, as well as by its opponents, much more numerous in Portugal. The last ones prophesy a forthcoming marginalization of their version of the Portuguese language in comparison to
Brazilian version’s approaching hegemony.

The paper intends to present a colourful image of metropolitan France, based on 378 inhabited place names found in the European part of the French territory in which exists a reference to any colour. The studied toponymes, collected in their majority from the index attached to a road atlas of Europe, are analysed from etimological and formal point of view (corresponding, respectively, to division according to colour and classification in three groups: simple colour names, derivatives from colour names and composed names). The final considerations contain conclusions resulting from the analysis, sustained by several statistics and accompanied by two provisory maps illustrating some of indicated phenomena.

The subject of the paper is a comparison of basic information concerning formation of diminutives in two Romance languages traditionally called peripheral – Portuguese and Romanian. After general considerations about the phenomenon of diminutive derivation comes a comparison of its mechanism in analysed languages, systematized in a table and illustrated with numerous examples. Special attention is put on words which only structurally reveal their primitive meaning and today are not at all understood as diminutives. The productivity of the diminutive derivation in Portuguese and Romanian is mentioned too, in reference to the results of B. Hasselrot’s studies.
 

L’étymologie de l’adjectif français bizarre (‘étrange, extraordinaire, extravagant’ 1) n’a pas été suffisamment élucidée jusqu’à présent. En parcourant des notes ou des articles consacrés à cet adjectif qui apparaissent çà et là dans la littérature étymologique (et linguistique en général), on constate que les chercheurs qui s’en occupent se divisent en deux groupes : les uns considèrent que bizarre est venu en français d’au-delà des Pyrénées, et les autres trouvent que son berceau réside décidément en Italie. Les traces de ces deux hypothèses, que dès maintenant nous appellerons, respectivement, ibérique et italienne, se sont répandues assez librement et de façon plutôt aléatoire dans plusieurs publications linguistiques et dictionnaires, pas forcément étymologiques.