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#121125 01/26/04 02:21 AM
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I don't know what a "continental secondary meaning" means jheem so I'm not sure what you're asking.

I just was asking if the verb baiser which originally meant 'to kiss' but now means 'to have sex' has this latter meaning also in Québec. Sorry to be vague.


#121126 01/26/04 10:48 AM
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Um, yes we do. These French do anyway. You'll notice that there is a world of difference (perhaps the expression should be 'an ocean') between the Franch French and the Canadian French.
[...]
Bis is used to mean "repeat" in written song lyrics. Otherwise, bis means a kiss, i.e. "donne moi un bis" (give me a kiss).


I am familiar with "bise" /biz/ rather than "bis" /bis/ to mean a kiss (and of course "gros bisou" when you're talking to an infant).

As for the Québec use of "encore", I believe this is a regionalism influenced by English usage. My Petit Robert lists this usage for "bis" but not for "encore". It would not be the only case of a French word used in Québec and in English, but not in bon Français de France - cf "brassière".


#121127 01/26/04 11:01 AM
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Sorry, but bis is good Latin for 'twice'; cognate with Greek dis, Sanskrit dvis from PIE *dwis.

You are quite right - for some reason I thought that the Latin "bis" was borrowed directly from Greek.

On the subject of "-ter", we also have
ob -> obiter
prope -> propter
post -> poster(us), poster(itas)

But in the cases of intra, contra and ultra, I think we may be seeing something different; contra especially is quite semantically different to cum/con, more than can easily be explained by a comparative ending. Originally I was looking for a noun like "*tera", but there is a stem "tri" in Sanskrit meaning "to step over/go beyond", which is surely related to L."trans" and could be the missing semantic ingredient in these words.


#121128 01/26/04 11:06 AM
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It seems that PIE had two genders: animate and inanimate which map roughly to non-o-stem masculine/feminine and neuter.

And both Dutch and Swedish have reverted to this condition - the two genders are "common" (representing masculine and feminine) and neuter. German of course still operates 3 genders (a curse be upon it!)


#121129 01/26/04 12:43 PM
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And both Dutch and Swedish have reverted to this condition - the two genders are "common" (representing masculine and feminine) and neuter.

Yes, and Hittite never bothered to split its common gender.


#121130 01/31/04 04:32 PM
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I was doing a bit of random surfing today and come upon this usage of bis:
http://en2.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saxophone
scroll all the way to the bottom(if you can tear yourself away from the picture of musician playing saxophone!!).
bis is used for the last of three Bb fingerings. can't quite make sense of that.




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