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Oxford Latin Dictionary says:

alis see alius.

-alis, -ale adjl. suff. Collat. w. -aris, which is used when the base contains an l (but cf. cleacalis, limitalis); formed from nouns (exitialis, officialis, regalis).

Was suffix -alis derived from alis or alius? Or are they unrelated?

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    Is there any reason to think they'd be connected?
    – Draconis
    Commented Jun 10, 2024 at 17:02

2 Answers 2

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As far as I know, they're unrelated.

De Vaan derives alius from PIE *h?el- "other" (compare Greek allos, Latin alter), which makes perfect sense. He doesn't list -ālis since it's not a lexeme in its own right, but it's hard to see how "pertaining to" could come from "other"; looking online, some sites suggest a link to the second half of ind-olēs ("innate"), in which case it would would come from an unrelated *h?el- "nourish", as in alō.

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Wiktionary offers:

From Proto-Indo-European *-li-, which later dissimilated into an early version of -āris (e.g., mīlitāris). Perhaps connected to *h?el- (“to grow”) (cf. the sense of indolēs, from this root).

So, apparently there's no connection with alis/alius ("other").

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