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A New Hypothesis on the Origin of French Aller

H. Diament

To cite this article: H. Diament (1968) A New Hypothesis on the Origin of French Aller,
<i>WORD</i>, 24:1-3, 73-80, DOI: 10.1080/00437956.1968.11435516

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H. DIAA!ENT----------------------------

A New Hypothesis on the

Origin of French Aller

The exact etymology of Fr. aller remains one of the more irksome
mysteries of Romance Linguistics. Most authorities have settled on Lat.
AMBULARE as the most likely etymon. The imperative form AMBULATE,
originating perhaps in military commands, is thought to have evolved
into AMB'LATE>ALATE. A Vulgar Latin *ALARE is postulated to
yield O.F. infinitive a/er. This form of the verb "to go" is uniquely
indigenous to Gaul. The first documentary reference actually antedates
emergence of Old French as a separate Romance tongue, as it is found in
the 8th century Glosses of Reichenau, which A. Labhardt ascribes to the
monastery of Corbie in Picardy. 1 Other areas of Romania have drawn
upon C.L. IRE and VL VADERE, *ANDARE< *AMBITARE. Rumanian
has even called upon MERGERE >a merge, thereby converting an
originally nautical term into a generalized idea of motion. This semantic
process will be seen to play an important role in the hypothesis (actually
twin hypotheses) hereafter proposed to account for the emergence of a/er
inN. Gaul.
Most authorities, from Littr to Elcock, agree that although hypotheses
have been many, no fully satisfactory explanation of the origin of aller
exists: " ... the mysterious verb ALARE," Elcock calls it.z This article
does not purport to solve the problem. Our intention is, however, to add
a new hypothesis, one that, as far as has been ascertained, has not been
advanced before. This hypothesis need not displace AMBULARE, but
may weil serve as a reinforcing buttress for AMBULARE in certain uses
on!y.
Our theory rests on a passage in E. Bourciez's Elments de linguistique
romane in which he implies that Provenal substantive a/a meant not only
'wing,' but also 'sail.' He cites the Provenal expression metre a/as which

1 Contributions la critique et l'explication des Gloses de Reichenau (Neuchtel,

1936), pp. 27-28.
2 W. D. Elcock, The Romance Languages (London, 1960), p. 314.
73
74 H. DIAMENT

he translates as 'mettre la voile.' 3 (Cf. modern French colloquial "mettre

les voiles" in the sense of 'to go away.') "Mettre la voile" only has a
nautical meaning in modern French; this allows one to conclude that
Bourciez meant that Prov. ala meant 'sail' in certain contexts. Meyer-
Lbke's Romanisches Etymologisches Worterbuch neither confirms nor
infirms this special use of Prov. ala.
Such a semantic extension of ala 'wing' is quite comprehensible on
grounds of visual similarity of shape plus the idea of motion and speed.
The metaphor, as a matter of fact, is qui te ancient and was first a pplied by
Classical Latin poets to the oars of galleys, thence to ships' sails. Thus
Propertius speaks of REMIGIUM ALARUM and of CLASSIS CENTENIS REMIGET
ALIS; the metaphor is ambivalent. 4 Vergil ex tends it to sails: " ... NOS
CASTRA MOVEMUS TEMPTAMUSQUE VIAM ET VELORUM PANDIMUS ALAS." 5 The
metaphor becomes standard maritime terminology in severa! Romance
languages: Sp. ala is defined as "Vela pequeia suplementaria que se larga
en tiempos bonancibles.'' 6 ltalian ala may be used as a synonym of vela by
poets and prose writers, ancient or modern: Dante speaks of"A quella foce
ha elli or dritta l'ala,/ pero che sem pre qui vi si ricogliejquale verso Acheronte
non si cala;" 7 D'Annunzio has "Guardava due ali di paranze in alto mare.'' s
Littr does not mention any French use of aile for nautical purposes, but
Larousse mentions the variant aile de pigeon, defined as "voile place au-
dessus des cacatois."
From a different provenience, but using the same imagery, Rumanian
uses as a figurative word for "sail" the expression aripa coriibiei, i.e., "wing
of the shi p.''
Intense interlingual mobility of nautical terms is a recognized fact.
Ever since the Greek settlement of the Mediterranean coast of Gaul,
navigational terms have originated there and have worked their way
northward. Provenal sailors were the heirs of the Greeks, and the
Mediterranean was for a long time the principal scene of naval activity:
"Trs peu de mots marins appartiennent au franais d'origine; ils ont t
emprunts aux langues germaniques et scandinaves, au provenal,
l'italien; mais leur naturalisation est parfaite .... "9 [ltalics mine] Such

3 Paris, 1923, p. 345.

4 W. A. Camps, Propertius, Elegies, Book IV (Cambridge, 1965), 4, 6, 47.
5 Aeneid, III, 520.
Diccionario de la lengua espafiola, Real Academia Espaiiola, Decimoctava Edici6n

(Madrid, 1956).
7 Purg. 2-103.
s Gabriele d'Annunzio, IV, 2, 24.
9 Rmy de Gounnont, Esthtique de la langue franaise (Paris, 1955}, p. 56.
 A NEW HYPOTHESIS ON THE ORIGIN OF FRENCH a/1er 75
terminological mobility may take place between dialectal variants of the
same language and the term may prosper in one area though not in the
other: "Thus there is a small, but defini te, nautical element in American
varieties of Spanish (e.g., amarrar for afar, "to tie a hawser" becoming
simply "to tie")."lO Von Wartburg agrees with de Gourmont on the
Provenal origin of many a French maritime term: "Mais quand on fouille
les dialectes du Midi on trouve un assez grand nombre de mots dont
l'origine grecque est vidente, mots qui n'existent nulle part dans la Romania
et que le latin, souvent, n'avait pas emprunts non plus. Quelques-uns
d'entre eux ont mme t transmis par ces dialectes la langue franaise.
Ces survivances grecques s'accordent parfaitement avec le rle et l'im-
portance particulire des Grecs dans la France mridionale. Les Mas-
saliotes ont organis la navigation, ils en ont eu le monopole pendant des
sicles. Le provenal en a conserv le souvenir ... "11 [Italics mine].
It is a well-known fact that nautical terms may Jose their nautical
meanings and retain only a general idea of motion, whether on sea or land,
e.g., Fr. arriver<AD+RIPARE (cf. archaic Spanish arrivar, found in
Nebrija) or Sp. 1/egar < PLICARE, which makes sense only if one con-
strues it as "folding of the sails" (cf. Rum. pleca, which means just the
opposite, "to set out;" this can be understood as a military expression
pertaining to a land army folding its tents: cf. mod. Fr. "plier bagage").
Provenal maritime terms could have moved northward through river
boatmen. Our first hypothesis postulates a Provenal verb *alar based on
attested Prov. ala "sail." The fact that such a verb has not been found in
Provenal literature may be explained as follows: 1) it might have been a
purely technical, nautical term, or even sailors' jargon, and thus would not
have been likely to become part of the literary ton gue of the Troubadours;
2) even if it had spread into the common daily tongue of Langue d'oc, it
clearly never displaced anar in the sense of "to go." lt must, then, have
retained its nautical meaning of "to hoist sail, to sail." Troubadours were
much more concerned with courtly love than with maritime sagas, hence
the absence of such a highly technical postulated term.
The mere mention of a/are forms in the Glosses of Reichenau (where it
appears four times) forces us to ascribe a very early origin to our hypo-
thetical Southern Gaul V.L. *ALARE based on ALA "sail." Interestingly
enough, one such gloss also has maritime overtones: TRANSFRETAVIT:
TRANS ALARET. Another gloss makes this "nauticality" unmistakable:
TRANSFRETARE: TRANS FRETUM IRE, ID EST TRANS MARE. The Glosses of

JOWilliam J. Entwistle, The Spanish language (London, 1962), p. 10.

IlW. von Wartburg, volution et structure de la langue franaise, 7th edition (Bern,
1965), p. 19.
76 H. DIAMENT

Reichenau also show that ALARE could have a meaning of plain motion:
TRANSGREDERE: ULTRA ALARE. lt is also noteworthy that a C.L. verbal
form ISSET is gJossed by AMBULASSET.
Whatever its origin, ALARE would naturally yield Francien aler (not
aller, a later graphy) when adopted in the north. The Reichenau Glosses
would seem to indicate that an original nautical meaning showed incipient
general motion by the 8th century at the latest. When aler appears, it
has the meaning of "to go," concurrent!y with ambler< AMBULARE.
Old French documents do not exhibit any chronology of specifie usage of
these two forms of "to go." There is not any "ambler period" followed by
an "aler period." The fact is that bath forms coexist from the beginning
and have never died out. Aler obviously becomes Mod. Fr. aller and
!oses whatever specifie, hypothetical maritime meaning it might have had,
just as arriver or llegar or, with only slight semantic drift, Port. marear,
originally "gouverner un vaisseau," now meaning "se conduire, se
diriger." 12 Ambler specializes into an equestrian meaning and survives as
such to this day, as weil as in the expression aller l'amble (a thought-
provoking juxtaposition!), cf. Eng. to amble, describing a certain way of
animal walking. Old French texts seem to bear out this specialization of
ambler from the 12th century onwards: "Li ciers i vint sur un mulet am-
blant'' (Ranc., p. 163). A 13th century text has "Et li destrier sur koi
[elles] seoient molt tost et molt souef ambloient" (Chr. de Rains, 70).13
Despite this early specialization, a/er had not yet full y conquered: the
Chanson de Roland, admittedly a bit earlier than our equestrian examples,
still shows, for instance, "qu'il ainz" < aner <*ANDARE for the sub-
junctive "qu'il aille."
On the phonological front, there is, of course, no objection to an
etymon AMBULARE for ambler. Such is not the case for a/er:" ... le
groupe bi appuy est particulirement solide en gallo-roman: loin qu'un
groupe mbl puisse passer m'l pour arriver Il, c'est au contraire, on le
sait, m' l qui devient toujours mbl (sim'lare >sembler)." 14 Dauzat has
remained on record as combatting AMBULARE, which has been ad-
vocated by v. Wartburg, O. Bloch, and Gamillschegg. In the Dictionnaire
Robert (1966) one reads under aller: "L'hypothse d'une contraction du
lat. ambulare, se promener, expliquant aller . .. est combattue par A.
Dauzat."
Our second, and complementary, hypothesis, is based on the following
fact: A Frankish verb ha/on (or Old Norse hala) was adopted by Francien
12 E. Bourciez, op. cit., p. 405.
13 Both quotations listed in Littr.
14 A. Dauzat, tudes de linguistique franaise (Paris, 1945), p. 182.
 A NEW HYPOTHESIS ON THE ORIGIN OF FRENCH al/er 77
as haler. Since Germanie aspirate initial /h/ was deaspirated when
adopted by French, the resulting pronunciation must have been extremely
close, if not identical, to a/er. This would hold true no matter when the
borrowing took place, whether from the Franks or the Normans. Since
haler also had a nautical meaning associated with motion (a technical
meaning it has retained in French to this day, both at sea and in con-
nection with river traffic, cf. chemin de halage) it might well have acted as
a phonologico-semantic nucleus of attraction and crystallization for our
postulated nautical Prov. *a/ar or its V.L. predecessor *ALARE, de-
pending on the time of such a borrowing. But the reverse process has
equal chances of being true. The Reichenau entries almost force one to
adopt the concept of early borrowing, which in turn induces one to con-
sider that it was Southern Gaul V.L. *ALARE "to sail" which attracted
Germanie ha/on or hala into its orbit as *HALARE >haler. Whichever
way one chooses to look at it, the attested Germanie and the hypothetical
early Provenal forms could well have blended.
Thus the usuaiiy advocated military command of ALATE!<AMBULATE,
which runs into such phonological difficulties, could be replaced,
or at the very least supplemented, by a naval command ALATE! "hoist
sail," or simply "sail!" If one accepts the Latin root ALA, with attested
ancient usage as a metaphor for "sail," as the point of origin of *ALARE,
there are no phonetic problems. Nor are there any if a Germanie maritime
origin is accepted.
The concept of a competing set of ambler and a/er (or earlier AMBU-
LARE and *ALARE), with the eventual semantic specialization of each,
is, we believe, quite plausible. It is paraileled, for instance, by the history
of many etymological doublets, where competing forms similarly special-
ized semantically. This would hold true, a fortiori, if the competing forms
are not cognates.
Last, but not least, it may be pointed out that the conjugated forms of
aller which reflect this etymology probably originated precisely in the
command forms (O.F. a/ons, alez). Second-person va is an exception, but
this might be accounted for on the basis that a naval maneuver would re-
quire the participation of severa! sailors. The forms could then have
penetrated the plural tint and second persons of the present indicative
without phonological change. They then replaced imperfect, past par-
ticiple, present subjunctive and, of course, the infinitive because of the
phonological attrition of C.L. IBAM, nus, EAM, and IRE. The latter
cause is advocated by Dauzat and Elcock, among others. No such fate
befell the French future irai or the conditional irais, phonologicaily better
buttressed by Romance synthetic construction with HABERE. VADERE,
78 H. DIAMENT

of course, took the place of short C.L. EO, IS, IT, and EUNT, and perfect
FUI forms took over IVI, an apparent transference of essence to existence.
lnto such an intensive irregularization of the conjugation of "to go," a
nautical partial import could easily have wormed its way.
A Provenal origin for *ALARE would receive sorne support from the
fact that the Franco-Provenal area, a dialectological transition area (as
weil as a geographical one: it is right in the middle of the north-south
Rhne-Sane river axis, and forms a locus of the Rhne, Loire, and Seine
basins; implications for "la batellerie fluviale" are evident) between
Langue d'ol and Langue d'oc, also uses the root ALA for its verb "togo."
Basing himself on Iinguistic atlases, particularly the Atlas linguistique de la
France (aller map), Dauzat declares that "L'aire aller offre une unit
phontique remarquable: al-a/a recouvre exactement le franais et le
franco-provenal: une forme apocope la occupe un lot l'extrme est du
Frioul." 15 The southern limit of Franco-Provenal, in Dauphin, reaches
the very doorstep of Provence and Provenal dialects. The Franco-
Provenal may thus historically have acted as intermediary in the pro-
pagation of *ALARE "to sail" or of the "finished product" ALARE "to
go."
Dauzat's remark on a Friulan la island is based upon the map ANDARE
of Jaberg and Jud's Swiss-Italian Linguistic Atlas. We believe it to be
significant that the locus of this form is the port of Trieste and its hinter-
land. This region has been an important naval center ever since Octavian
(Augustus) ordered the construction ofits harbor in 33 B.C. The semantic
processes postulated for Marseilles would seem to have been the same for
Trieste (ancient Tergeste).
Even more significant, perhaps, is the fact that there is a standard
Italian verb a/are. Sure enough, it is restricted to purely nautical use.
The Cambridge Italian Dictionary gives two such meanings, but on/y one
etymology: 1) "to tow or haul," borrowed from Fr. haler (documented
from the 12th century) 2) "(naut.) intr. (aux. avere) to sail close to the
wind." The intransitive verb could easily be ascribed to a/a "sail," already
attested in Dante, and would represent a partial parallel to the process we
postulate for Fr. aller, with the exception that it has not gone on to the
generalized meaning of "to go." lt may, however, be regarded as actual
proof that the substantive a/a "sail" may yield a verb a/are "to sail" (cf.
also Fr. cingler< Old Norse segl, according to v. Wartburg).
A corollary of our theory of the origin of aller would have to ascribe to
the subst. allure a similar naval origin. In order to be consistent, one would

15 Op. cit., p. 181.

 A NEW HYPOTHESIS ON THE ORIGIN OF FRENCH al/er 79
have to trace it to Provenal as weil. While Littr, of course, lists the main
meanings as connected with "going," he also gives, in fifth place, two
naval ones: "5 En termes de marine, direction de la route d'un btiment
par rapport celle du vent; disposition de voilure approprie cette
route" [Italics mine]. The first meaning is somewhat reminiscent of the
Italian verb a/are. The second meaning may be considered as a semantic
bridge, retrospectively, to a hypothetical V.L. *ALATURA which we
assume to have meant, in southern Gaul, "the totality of a ship's sails."
French has severa! marine terms using the suffix -ure< -URA with a
collective meaning, e.g., envergure, mture, and, of course, voilure. This
suffix was in wide use in Provenal for the formation of abstract nouns,
e.g., a significant ambladura "marche au pas." While the standard Pro-
venal word for "sail" was vela, our entire hypothesis rests on an equally
attested a/a (perhaps from a different dialect.) To this may be added the
fact that early attested forms in French documents have only one jlj, just
as ALARE. Says Littr: "La forme ancienne rgulire est alere, dont la
contraction s'est faite de bonne heure et qui wppose un bas-latin, alatura."
It may also be of interest to note that Old French literary documents seem
to show a transition period in which alere carries the idea of speed rather
than manner of walking as allure does today. Just as aller l'amble has
seemed to us to juxtapose two semantic specializations, soit seems to us in
the following 13th century example listed by Littr: "Lors m'en alai grant
alere [vitesse], (la Rose, 513)." Again, the concept of speed attached to
alere would seem to militate in favor of an original naval meaning similar
to that of Fr. voilure. Under this concept, a modern French expression
such as toute allure "at top speed" would have retained an original
meaning later conveyed by toutes voiles dehors and which other modern
uses of allure do not show, save for the very specialized nautical uses
mentioned supra. Since, according to Anglade, Pro v. ambladura specialized
as "marche au pas" (thereby precluding any idea of speed), which would
agree semantically with a Latin etymon AMBULATURA, 16 might one
not seek the etymology of Fr. allure in a V.L. *ALATURA, or an early
Provenal *aladura, concurrent with *a/ar? Both ALATURA and
ALURA appear in Medieval Latin documents of Northern France,
ALATURA in 1320, and ALURA Iisted as a "regular occurence" be-
tween 1188 and circa 1488, with the meaning of "rampart-walk." 17
These references are late, they are artificial in that they reflect the by then
common meaning of Fr. a/er "to go, to walk" and they in no way preclude
16 Attested in F. Vegetius Renatus, who flourished about A.D. 386; 6, 6, 6; 6, 6, 7;
2, 5, 2. Used only in connection with horses (cf. Ital. ambiadura, OF ambleure).
17 Revised Medieval Latin Word List, British Academy (London, 1965).
80 H. DIAMENT

the existence of a southern, naval V.L. *ALATURA centuries earlier.

It is to be hoped that * ALATURA, *aladura or *a/ar may sorne day be
documented. But it is suggested that attested Prov. metre a/as, Latin ALA
'sail,' Italian a/are and the Reichenau gloss TRANSFRETAVIT: TRANS
ALARET provide one, in the meantime, with fairly solid evidence for this
hitherto unproposed etymology of aller.
University of California, Irvine