medieval-religion: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
Dear Bill,
On Sunday, September 10, 2006, at 5:04 pm, you wrote, quoting me and
then responding:
> You've lost me here, I'm afraid. 'puella' is merely the feminine
> equivalent of 'puer'. Though morphologically it is, as you point
> out, a
> diminutive, semantically the word has no diminutive force beyond
> what's in its base meaning. Mary is not a '_little_ girl'; indeed,
> being married, she's at the upper end of the age spectrum for a
> 'puella'.
>
> Respondeo:
>
> The point, I think, is not how old Mary may have been as a matter
> of historical fact, but the tone of the word our author uses for
> her. He could have called her virgo, mulier, femina, filia, but
> instead he calls her puella. 'puella' is a diminutive in form - it
> is the feminine form of 'puellus' rather than of 'puer' - and there
> is a suggestion of littleness. This is the way poetry works.
I'm sorry, but that won't do. As you must know, words that are
diminutive in form sometimes lose their diminutive force. It is
therefore unpersuasive to claim that because a word has a diminutive
form it must also be diminutive in meaning. 'puella' and 'puellus' are a
morphologic pair but not a semantic one, as a glance at the _Oxford
Latin Dictionary_, p. 1514, will quickly show.
According to the _OLD_, 'puellus' means a) 'A (young) boy'; b '(in
erotic context) a catamite'. Its feminine counterpart semantically is
'puellula' (diminutive from 'puella'), glossed by the _OLD_ as 'A
(young) girl or maiden'.
'puella', on the other hand, has three meanings in the _OLD_:
1) 'A female child, girl'.
2) 'A young woman (married or otherwise), girl, maiden'.
3) 'A young woman as an object of sexual interest; one's girl, sweetheart'.
Note that none of these meanings of 'puella' embodies any diminutive
sense beyond that already present in 'girl'. The 'puella' of the hymn
doesn't have to be 'a _little_ girl' (as you gloss her; emphasis mine)
any more than the 'pueri innuptaeque puellae' of Vergil, _Georg._ 4. 476
and _Aen._ 6. 307, Statius, _Silv._ 1. 1. 12, and pseudo-Tertullian,
_Carmen de Iudicio Domini_, 162 have to be 'boys and unwed little girls'
(note also the pairing of 'puellae' with the semantically analogous
'pueri'). Or than the 'laborantes utero puellas' of Horace, _Carm._ 3.
22. 2 are little girls or than the 'fallacis coniunx incaute puellae'
addressed by Tibullus at _Carm._ 1. 6. 15 is married to a little girl.
They're just girls (a word of somewhat elastic meaning, as far as age is
concerned). That's the way language works. And poetry too, to judge
from these instances.
Best again,
John Dillon
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