What is the definition of "iat" in Commissariat/Secretariat, also what are some other "iat" words. (Links, if you have any, please.)
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So essentially all "iat" words are derived from french, which are derived from latin? (E.G Professoriat, Salariat, Lariat)– ValtharsusCommented Sep 30, 2013 at 21:40
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Yes, that is right.– Cerberus - Reinstate MonicaCommented Sep 30, 2013 at 22:10
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Are you by any chance... a modern Major-General? (And will we next see you on Weaponry.SE asking about Mauser rifles and javelins?)– Nate EldredgeCommented Oct 1, 2013 at 4:19
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@Nate Eldredge who are you talking to?– ValtharsusCommented Oct 2, 2013 at 5:16
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Sorry, it was a silly joke. In Gilbert and Sullivan's comic opera The Pirates of Penzance, there is a song where a "Modern Major-General" sings about how he would like to "know precisely what is meant by 'commisariat'". In another line, he wishes he could "tell at sight a Mauser rifle from a javelin".– Nate EldredgeCommented Oct 2, 2013 at 15:14
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3 Answers
The -i- just happens to be there because it is part of the words they were derived from, i.e. secretarius and commissarius. The ending -at(e) describes either 1) an office, function, or abstract entity related to the word it is derived from, or 2) a passive participial noun, such as mandate "something that is demanded". The ending -at is simply a spelling variation of -ate.
In Latin, the regular past participle of verbs is made by adding the suffix -t- to the stem plus the ending -us/-a/-um (1st/2nd declension). So English minute is from minu-t-us "diminished", from minuo "to diminish, to make small": a very small piece cut off from an hour. (Note that diminish is from the related Latin di-minuo.)
Words denoting an abstract entity, such as an action or an office, can be made by adding -us (4th declension) to the stem on -t-. So English advent is derived from adven-t-us, "the act or process of arriving", from advenio "to arrive".
When you want to form a past participle based on something that isn't a verb, you often add -a- in between. Based on that, magister "master" led to magistr-a-t-us (2nd declension) "someone made into a master, a magistrate", or (4th declension) "the office of being a master, the magistrature". Both words could legitimate be formed based on magister. This was also done with secretari-us (regular adjective) => secretari-atus (4th declension, abstract entity)¹ and commissari-us.
In French, both endings evolved into the ending -(a)t, from which English took secretariat, commissariat, proletariat, but also most of our other words on -ate and -it(e), which were mostly spelled without the -e until ca. 1400 in English, so says the Oxford English Dictionary. By that time, -e began to be regularly added to both kinds of words to mark the long vowel, but a few words kept their original French -at in English.
Verbs on -(a)te are also derived from the past-participial stem.
1) Purified Google search for a form of the 4th declension of secretariatus: plenty of hits. Purified Google search for a form of the 2th declension of secretariatus: only one hit, and that written in the 20th century. So Secretariat most probably comes from an abstract noun of the 4th declension.
answered Sep 30, 2013 at 20:58
Cerberus - Reinstate MonicaCerberus - Reinstate Monica
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Beat me to the punchline! (Though I don’t like the way you separate the t from the vowel in the participial suffix … I suppose it can’t really be helped in Latin, but still, it hurts a bit.) Commented Sep 30, 2013 at 21:14
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@JanusBahsJacquet: Hi! Why don't you like it? I did that to separate the participial/supine suffix -t- from the masculine suffix/ending -us (2nd declension, i.e. theme vowel o/u, endings us/i/o/um/o; i/orum/is/os/is): the latter is less relevant and no part of the class of -t-us abstract nouns, which have a different suffix/ending -us (4th declension, i.e. theme vowel -u- plus endings of the 3rd declension: -/(i)s/i/m/e; es/um/bus/es/bus). Or did you just mean some...visually aesthetic dislike of all those hyphens... Commented Sep 30, 2013 at 21:26
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I only dislike it because it is in origin a stressed, non-ablauting vowel—the participial suffix is *-tó- (*-tós/-tóm/-tósi̯o/-tó-ei̯, etc.), while the abstracts have a different (ablauting) suffix, *-tu-/-teu̯. This distinction has been quite lost in Latin, of course, by the initial stress and subsequent vowel changes and gender levellings, so the two appear to be simply -t- + regular paradigmatic endings. Commented Sep 30, 2013 at 21:31
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@JanusBahsJacquet: Ah okay, so you are saying this -tó- cannot be analysed any further? Is it not the same theme vowel as found in, say, *bonus? And can this -t(e)u not be further analysed either? Is there no relation at all between them? I am thinking of Greek -t- but I don't know. (BTW I wasn't analysing the suffix(es) that far back, I was just looking at the way they functioned in the classical period to make new words. One conventionally says participles and abstracts are formed based on the supine stem, in an almost synchronic terminology, disregarding the PIE/PL origins...) Commented Sep 30, 2013 at 22:07
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Perhaps it is simply because the participial (or adjectival) suffix is always written as *-tó- that the separation jars. Even Szemerényi states that the suffix is likely to be just a thematic variant of the whole set of *-t- suffix forms, though of course it has the decidedly unthematic quality of being invariably stressed and invariably invariable (no o/e alternation). I suppose there can be no doubt that the t present in both *-tó-, *-ti/tei̯-, and *-tu/teu̯- is the same, and that the following vowels are extensions to it; but separating them is just not normally done. [cont’d] Commented Sep 30, 2013 at 22:48
It’s basically a mixture of various endings.
In Latin, there are a group of adjectives that are derived with the suffix -ārius; some of these include:
sēcrētārius (‘having to do with a sēcrētum [secret]’)
commissārius (‘having to do with being commissus [in charge/committed]’)
prōlētārius (‘having to do with prōlēs [offspring, progeny]’
So the -ārius suffix means something like ‘having to do with X’.
These words were all originally adjectives, but for some reason, words with this particular suffix were particularly prone to be used as nouns. Sēcretārius, for example, meant something like ‘secretive’ or ‘confidential’, but went on to become used almost exclusively as a noun denoting a person who was these things: a secretary (or confidant).
Once this was the situation, there naturally arose a need to create an adjective corresponding to these nouns. The choice for a suffix to do this seems to have (somewhat oddly, perhaps) fallen on an analogical use of the suffix -ātus, which is really the passive participle suffix for first-declension verbs (āmō ‘I love’ -> āmātus ‘[be]loved’).
Why the late Romans chose this particular suffix is quite obscure—its meaning of ‘having been X-ed’ does not really fit with an adjective that just means ‘having to do with X’, after all … but choose it they did:
sēcrētārius -> sēcrētāriātus ‘having to do with someone who has to do with secrets’
commissārius -> commissāriātus ‘having to do with someone who has to do with having been put in charge’ (!)
prōlētārius -> prōlētāriātus ‘having to do with someone who has to do with offspring’
These might seem like quite roundabout ways to say things, but this kind of ‘recursive derivation’ is quite common in Latin. I don’t think the Romans really thought about them in that way; they probably just thought of sēcrētārius as a simplex word from which an adjective was derived.
As happened to their ‘parent’ words, the adjectives in -(āri)ātus in their turn also started to be used as nouns. Since the nominalised forms of -ārius adjectives often denoted people, the nominalised forms of the -(āri)ātus adjectives naturally tended to describe either places or groups that were connected to these people.
Since then, the words passed into French and lost their final syllables (and some vowel fronting and other historical magic took place to turn -ārius into -aire in Modern French and -ary in Modern English), and voilà: you have words with -ary and derived words in -ariat in English.
answered Sep 30, 2013 at 21:10
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By the way, you seem to be saying here that the likes of secretariatus are derived from the past participles, not the nouns of the 4th declension? Commented Sep 30, 2013 at 22:12
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Not really derived from the past participles as such. They represent quite a late derivation, so I would imagine the past participle suffix was just used as a kind of generic adjectivising suffix, semi-separately from its true participial meaning. Adjectival uses seem to predate nominal uses, so I would think the fourth-declension abstracts an unlikely candidate for this particular derivation. Commented Sep 30, 2013 at 22:21
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Okay, sure, the adjectival/"supine" stem on -t- without the -u- of the 4th declension, then. But I think the English was derived from the noun of the 4th declension in the case of secretariat. We know there was a word secretariatus meaning "the office of being a secretary". As you say about the form of the 2nd declension, its meaning of ‘having been X-ed’ does not really fit with an adjective that just means ‘having to do with X’. Shouldn't that be strong an argument for a derivation from the 4th declension? Commented Oct 1, 2013 at 1:16
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...There are no participial nouns on -tus (2nd) with the required meaning that I know of in Latin (only neuter -tum could even come close, though it would still be passive), but very many on -tus (4th) with the required meaning. And we have plenty of English words on -(a)t(e) that are proven to have come from the 4th declension, such as *senate, triumvirate, state, syndicatus, etc. Commented Oct 1, 2013 at 1:17
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Fourth-declension abstracts would be a more fitting basis, yes; though I don't see where the -ā- comes from, then. Applying a verbal stem vowel to an entirely nominal derivation seems quite arbitrary and odd, even for late Latin. Commented Oct 1, 2013 at 7:34
These two words come from French - and I believe they are the only ones ending by -iat, which has no specific meaning.
"Secrétariat" comes itself from Latin secretarius, connected with "secret" ; there is tendency in Roman languages, especially Catalan, to end words by -iat ; "secrétairerie" has existed in French, but could not survive for euphonic reasons (logically derived, but a true gargle).
Perhaps "commissariat", the origin of which is also Latin (commissus), but the derivation more obscure, has been forged by imitation ?
