Gallo-Romance lenition in Germanic loanwords

Abstract

Abstract One of the earliest changes affecting Western Romance before the end of the Roman Empire was the lenition of intervocalic *p, *t, *k to *b, *d, *g. We find its effects in a number of Romance loanwords in West Germanic. The word for ‘market’ has not played a role in this discussion because it is often attested with t in the West Germanic languages. Still, there are strong indications that the word was borrowed into Germanic as *markadu after the lenition of intervocalic t in Romance. Its phonological make-up is comparable to that of Latin vocatus, which was borrowed into Germanic as *fogadu.