When does the adjectival suffix -al take the form -ar?
Some books say only immediately after the letter l; that is, -ar is used only to avoid the string *-lal. Thus, we see it in words like solar, regular, stellar, particular, etc. Other books say -ar is used when it is added to any root that contains the letter l, even if the l is not root-final. Neither of these rules is correct.
As far as I can tell, -al is always used if the word or root to which it is appended does not contain the letter l; and -ar is always used if l is the last letter of the word or root to which it is appended. If the word or root contains l, but not as the last letter, both forms are attested.
-al: algal, allodial, alluvial, celestial, colloquial, colonial, electrical, filial, intellectual, larval, laryngeal, lateral, legal, Levitical, lexical, liminal, lingual, local, logical, loyal, lustral, palatal, palatial, phalangeal, plagal, plural, pluvial, political, polygonal, relational
-ar: columnar, lumbar, lunar, peculiar, planar, plantar, vulgar
both: familial, familiar, lineal, linear
This isn't anything like a complete survey of relevant words, just the ones that came to mind off the top of my head. (Readers, please comment with any others you can think of.) I don't see any very clear pattern here, so for now I think it's best to think of the "avoid -lal" rule as the basic one, and words like lunar and lumbar as exceptions.
2 comments:
Hmmm... Did "familial/familiar" or "lineal/linear" originally have the same definitions? Or does the fact that there are two variations for each of those roots originate in the need to have two different words with different definitions from those roots?
Yes, the two words in each of these pairs originally had the same meaning.
Familiar and linear are the older forms, both from Latin, and follow the Latin rule of dissimilating -alis to -aris when the root contains l. Familial and lineal were introduced later (in French and Late Latin, respectively), when the dissimilation rule was no longer productive.
Post a Comment