'Quirites': fuori dal mito

• Autores: Alberto Nocentini
• Localización: Archivio glottologico italiano, ISSN 0004-0207, Vol. 106, Nº. 1, 2021
• Idioma: español
• Texto completo no disponible (Saber más ...)
• Resumen

  • The origin of Latin Quirītes, which is considered a synonym of cives Romani, i.e. ‘Roman citizens’, has been disputed by linguists, historians, and jurists without a convincing result. The Latin terms that can be directly involved are Quirīnus, the name of the indigenous Roman god, and Uirītes, the name of the minor divinities which form his retinue and is an abstract derivative of uir ‘man’. In the inherited lexicon of the IndoEuropean languages there are evident tracks of an initial alternating pattern ø-/k-, like in the Greek doublet αὐλός ‘tube’: καυλός ‘stalk’, corresponding to Lithuanian aũlas ‘legging’: káulas ‘shinbone’. The explanation of these doublets may be found in various types of morphological pattern largely widespread among the languages of the world and known as ‘echo-formations’, like English hocus-pocus. In the languages where such patterns are grammaticalized, like Turkish, a doublet as dergi mergi ‘journals and similar things’ consists of dergi ‘journal’ and mergi, an echo-word with an initial non-etymological m-. A similar pattern with an initial non etymological k- in the echo-word forming the doublet Uirītes Quirītes with the meaning of ‘all the men individually considered’ is supposed to be at the origin of Quirītes.