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XIII.—Metipsimus in Spanish and French
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 December 2020
Extract
This article will deal only with the phonology of the problem. By a careful study of the Spanish and French forms I hope to establish the correct etymologies of the important forms and to show that we must suppose for Vulgar Latin a form metīpsimus by the side of 
As I have said in my Studies in New Mexican Spanish, the majority of the explanations previously given for the various forms in Spanish and French, are curious rather than scientific. Gaston Paris (Extraits de la Chanson de Roland, § 18), Cornu (Rom. xiii, 289) and Menéndez Pidal (Gram. Hist., § 66), however, seem to have come to believe in a long vowel for some of the forms and rightly so. As to the numerous attempts made by others, it is only necessary to say, that in so far as the Spanish and French forms are concerned, every explanation which the writer has seen is either a traditional error or a new one. Such explanations as those of Baist (Grundriss, i, 887, and Krit. Jahrsb., i, 534), Cejad or (La Leng. de Cervantes, i, 739), Cuervo (Apuntaciones, § 777), Ford (Don Quixote, 93), Pieri (ZRPh., xxvii, 584) and others for the Spanish forms, and of Mussafia (Rom., xxviii, 112), Etzrodt (Rom. Forseh., xxvii, 878), Harseim (Boehmer Stud., iv, 287) and others for the French forms have little or no basis in fact and I need not refute them here.
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References
page 356 note 1 The semasiology of the problem needs no further discussion, see ALLG, iii, 270, and Grandgent, Vulg. Lat., § 66.
page 356 note 2 Révue de Dialectologie Romane, i, 185. See also P. Barbier Fils, Ibid., ii, 496.
page 356 note 3 In Spanish the traditional error has been to attempt to derive mismo from mesmo, starting with the Lat. met~ipsimu. My objections to such a procedure are based on the fact that of the Spanish forms mismo is as old if not older than mesmo, as I shall soon show. The archaic meïsmo and the other old Hispanic forms, such as Galician meesmo and miismo have not been known to those who have written about the etymology of the Spanish forms and left out of consideration, important as they are. In French there has also prevailed the error of attempting to derive (often by very ingenious but improbable phonetic processes) misme and even mtisme from meesme, but as a matter of fact meïsme is by far the prevailing form in old French and medisme is the oldest. The forms misme, meisme have been usually avoided by the French etymologists.
page 357 note 1 I do not include Catalan in my use of this word.
page 357 note 2 The form miesmo used by Lope de Vega (see Pietsch, Mod. Phil., vii, 57) is used for mesmo (false dipthongization) and deserves no consideration as an etymological form.
page 358 note 1 In all cases I have limited my examples to the xii and xiii centuries. Some texts have not been examined in their entirety, but the cases of either mesmo or mismo have been carefully recorded as far as the text was examined. In the Pr. Crónica Gen, for example, I have examined the first 200 pages, and only mismo occurs.
page 360 note 1 In all cases I use mismo for mismo, misma, mismos, mismas, and likewise mesmo for mesmo, mesma, etc. In mismo for Berceo I also include misme which he uses very frequently for either gender, e. g., San Millán 22d, 145a, 258c, 313d, etc., etc. In the French forms, I use likewise the masculine sing. accus. for all cases, numbers, and genders.
page 361 note 1 See Staaff, Étude sur l'ancien dialecte Léonais, § 53.
page 363 note 1 Arte Grande de la Lengua Castellana (ed. Viñaza) page 101. Fifty years before, César Oudin (Tesoro de las lenguas Española y Francesa, 1575, Vol. i, col. 667) gives for French mesme Spanish, mesmo and mismo.
page 365 note 1 I include such orthographies as methisme, methime, methesme in medisme, medesme. For several very rare and curious forms see (e) note.
page 365 note 2 In all cases (except the prose texts, where meïsme, meïme are established for the old French period thru the evidence of the texts in verse), the forms can be controlled with certainty thru meter and assonance or ryme.
page 366 note 1 In these texts meeme and meïsme also occur, see meesme, meïsme.
page 366 note 2 The fall of s began in the xiith century, see (b). The cases of meïme will be so indicated in each text, the form meïsme is otherwise the form cited.
page 369 note 1 In this text the form is meïmes for all cases and genders. Mismes is likewise used in St. Bernard, and meïsmes in the Aymeri de Narbonne.
page 372 note 1 Several rare and obscure cases are found in old French. In the form maismes given by Godeffroy, ai may be et or e, so that the difficulty may be only orthographical. On the other hand it can be phonetically derived from maxime with the adverbial s added. Of the other forms given by Godeffroy, I have no examples of mieme, moiime, moime, moieme. The oi forms may be due to progressive assimilation from moi, mei meïsme > moi meïsmi > moi moisme, etc. On the other hand if the eï became monosyllabic early, the whole change may be regular, et > oi. In the dialectic 
(Atlas Ling. de la France, Carte 832.), we may have a continuation of either of these developments. The forms maemmes (Orson de Beauvais, op. cit., 378), meammes (Ibid., 1023) may also present difficulties which are merely orthographical.
page 372 note 2 The form is as old as the xiith century, e. g., Simund de Freisne (op. cit.), R. Ph., 1371 ‘Seit de meimes la manere‘ (7 syll.), but it is not frequent until the xivth century.
page 373 note 1 The fall of s may have been general in all these forms, tho the orthography preserves it to the xviiith century.
“Que de celle matiere 
Selon que soubtilleté aime.“
The 
probably represents here a close e. The s also is silent, see p. 371.
page 375 note 1 The fall of s was by this time probably general, see (b) and the rymes cited in (c) and (d).
page 376 note 1 I have no complete data for Provençal but in the old language the double development is found just as in Spanish, Galician and French. There are found mezis, medips, meïne, meïpme and mezes, medes, medesime, meesme, meepme, etc., see Levy, Prov. Suppl. Wörterbuch, s. v.
page 376 note 2 I include in this resumé all the important forms. The general lists give an account of all the forms. The prevailing form is underscored.
page 377 note 1 See Schuchardt, Vocalismus des Vulgärlateins, i, 118–122, Lindsay, Latin Language, 123.