Re: Volcanus>falcon?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> 17-03-2004 17:51, Daniel J. Milton wrote:
>
> > Initial p- simply disappears in Old Irish. I find sources that
> > suggest this is not an Irish idiosyncrasy, but a proto-Celtic
> > feature. Maybe someone can make a more definitve statement here.
>
> Pre-Celtic initial or intervocalic *p (also when adjacent to a

liquid in

> word-initial positions) eventually dissapeared everywhere in Celtic
> through gradual lenition: *p > *f > *h > zero. It seems to have

been a

> fricative rather than phonological zero in Proto-Celtic and a

glottal

> glide ([h]) in early Celtic dialects and Ogam Irish (but not in

Gaulish

> as known from inscriptions), cf. the rendering of probable

etymological

> *p in old Celtic names with Latin <h> (Helvetii, Hercynia).
>

The Parisii are a problem, if Kuhn is right that the names should be
etymologized as *par- + *i:s- "those at the Oise river", which river
joins the Seine few tens of kilometer up river from the capital of
the Parisii, Lutetia Parisium (probably not -orum, some article I
read a long time ago proposed that Augsburg was once Augusta
Vindelicum, not: Vindelicorum; for 'tribal' gen.pl. of former Celtic
cities the Romans did not replace the Celtic -um with their own -
orum; that's why the capital of France is not *Parisieur and the
capital of Savoy not *Torinoro). Cf. Aremorica < *(p)ar- + *mor-
"land at the sea" (cf. Polish Pomorze), in which the /p/ has been
properly done away with. Kuhn speculates that the Belgae had expanded
shortly before Caesar's time, all the way to the Seine (and Sequana
is also a problem, unreformed /kW/!).

Torsten