caminata

Latin

Alternative forms
  • keminada (Kassel glosses)
  • caminada, camenata

Etymology

Ellipsis of *[camera camīnāta], that is camera (“chamber”) and camīnus (“fireplace”) +‎ -āta (“provided with”).

First attested in 584 CE in sense 1 and the ninth century in sense 3, which developed in northern France to fill the semantic space vacated by camīnus ("fireplace", later "chimney"), the latter having been locally discarded after it became a homophone for cammīnus (“path, way”) due to ongoing consonant degemination.

The French descendant of camīnāta, namely cheminee, made its way into numerous other languages as chimney-making techniques spread from northern France.

Pronunciation
Comments

The vowel of the second syllable is etymologically [i(ː)], which in the evolution to Romance would be expected to 'weaken' in this environment, at least variably, yielding something along the lines of [ə] or [ɪ] (> [e]).

Any of the attestations with ⟨i⟩ could equally reflect [i] or [e], since ⟨i⟩ stood for both vowels in Late Latin and early medieval spelling. (This orthographic phenomenon resulted from the merger of original Latin /ĭ/ and /ē/; it was absent from the few areas that lacked the merger, such as Sardinia and Roman Africa.)

Some corroboration of the [ə]/[e] variant indicated by the spelling ⟨camenata⟩ is to be found among the Old French reflexes of camīnāta with ⟨e⟩ in the second syllable, such as chamenee, where the vowel in question probably stands for [ə]. Nevertheless, it is more common to encounter Old French forms with [i] instead, such as cheminee.

As for the Italian cam(m)inata, its [i] could derive from either an older [i] or [e], as the two vowels merged in Italian to [i] in this position.

Otherwise, all the Romance reflexes provided below unambiguously reflect an original [i]. The general triumph of this vowel can be attributed to continued influence from the root word camīnus (“fireplace”), where the maintenance of [ˈi] is regular. In French it may have additionally been reinforced by a folk-etymology that analysed cheminee as chemin (“path, way”) + -ée, thus legitimizing it against un-analysable forms like chamenee.

Noun

camīnāta f (genitive camīnātae); first declension

  1. (Late Latin) room with a chimney, living room, parlour
  2. (Early Medieval Latin) bedroom
  3. (Early Medieval Latin) chimney

Declension

First-declension noun.

Case Singular Plural
Nominative camīnāta camīnātae
Genitive camīnātae camīnātārum
Dative camīnātae camīnātīs
Accusative camīnātam camīnātās
Ablative camīnātā camīnātīs
Vocative camīnāta camīnātae

Descendants
  • Italo-Romance:
    • Italian: camminata, caminata (archaic)
  • North Italian:
    • Lombard: caminada
    • Romansch: chamineda, chaminada, chimineda
  • Gallo-Romance:
    • Old French: cheminee (see there for further descendants)
    • Occitan: caminada, chaminada
    • → Proto-West Germanic: *kaminādā (see there for further descendants)

References

Spanish

Etymology

From caminar +‎ -ata.

Pronunciation
  • IPA(key): /kamiˈnata/ [ka.miˈna.t̪a]
  • Rhymes: -ata
  • Syllabification: ca‧mi‧na‧ta

Noun

caminata f (plural caminatas)

  1. (long) walk, hike, trek

See also

Further reading
This article is issued from Wiktionary. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.