Re: Not "catching the wind " , or, what ARE we discussing?

From: Rick McCallister
Message: 57196
Date: 2008-04-13

--- dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen"
> <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
> >
> > [...]
> >
> > Ernout-Meillet:
> > 'cattus, -i: m., et catta, -ae f. (doublet gattus,
> gatta):
> > chat, chatte.
> > Attesté avec ce sens depuis Palladius (le terme
> ancien est fe:le:s);
> > bien représenté dans les l. romanes;
>
> Palladius has the first attestation of <cattus>
> 'tomcat', but <catta>
> as an epicene goes back to Baruch 6:21 in the
> Vulgate, translating
> <ailouros> of verse 21 of the Epistle of Jeremiah in
> the LXX (for
> some reason this is appended to Baruch in the
> Vulgate, which has only
> 5 chapters in the LXX). The Latin Baruch is one of
> the books which
> predates Jerome and was not edited by him, so its
> composition may go
> back to 250 CE or so.
>
> > ital. gatto,-a, esp. gato,-a; fr. chat, chatte,
> M.L.1770.
> > Sur cattus ... quod cattat, i.e. uidet
> > dans Isid.12,2, 38., v. Sofer, p.62.-
> > Dans Martial, 13, 69,1, Pannonicas nobis numquam
> dedit Vmbria
> cattas,
> > le mot semble désigner un oiseau, peut-être le
> hoche-queue,
> aílouros,
> > cf. gattula "attagé:n" Orib.
> > La substitution de cattus à fe:le:s doit
> correspondre à
> l'introduction
> > à Rome du chat domestique, sans doute importé
> d'ailleurs.
>
> A cat named Krankru is depicted resting on a table
> or couch in the
> tomb of the Etruscan family Leinie, ca. 300 BCE, at
> Sette Camini (TLE
> 235 = CIE 5095).
>
> > Dérivés: cattin(e)us, tardif (= fe:li:nus);
> > catto:,-as, cf. sans doute esp. catar.
> > Le celtique a irl. catt, gall. cath reposent sur
> *kattos, qui figure
> > en gaulois comme nom propre Cattos;
> > l'emprunt du mot au latin, admis par M.Pedersen,
> est donc peu
> > vraisemblable.
> > Le vieux haut allemand a kazza, le v.norr. ko,ttr,
> le lituanien
> > kâte.~, le slave kotUka. Mais ces mots peuvent
> provenir, comme le
> mot
> > latin, d'une langue inconnue. Le "chat" domestique
> ne s'est répandu
> > que tardivement dans le monde romain; l'origine en
> est discutée
> > (Afrique?).'
> >
> > So, if Celtic *kattos is unlikely to have been
> borrowed from Latin,
> > but must come from some other language, why must
> Germanic *kattu- be
> > borrowed from Latin? What other examples are there
> of a Latin
> thematic
> > stem being borrowed into Germanic as a u-stem (cf.
> the -U- in the
> > Slavic word)?
>
> With this particular word <cattus>, borrowing into
> early Gmc. as a u-
> stem is not a problem, because many of the Latin
> sentences probably
> involved the nom. sg., unlike words for inanimate
> objects. It is not
> hard to imagine a Roman merchant showing off his
> domestic cat and
> saying "hic est meus cattus; meus cattus mures
> captat et devorat;
> meus cattus arbores noctu scandit ad aves
> capiendas", etc. It would
> have been natural for the nom. sg. <cattus> to have
> been borrowed as
> a u-stem. Gothic retains <handus> and the like
> uncontracted, if
> memory serves.
>
> The cat itself might come from Africa, but looking
> for the word there
> is a dead end. None of the three Coptic words for
> 'cat', including
> the one used in the Coptic version of the Epistle of
> Jeremiah,
> resembles <catta> at all. My best guess is that
> Latin <catta> in
> both its senses, 'certain Pannonian bird (the
> wagtail?)'
> and 'domestic cat', is borrowed from Messapic (or
> related Illyro-
> Japygian) *katta, a hypocoristic form of a compound
> whose first
> element *katt- is cognate with Lat. <quassus>
> 'shaken', and whose
> second (unidentifiable) element means 'tail' or
> 'rear end', the
> compound meaning 'having a shaken tail' or 'shaking
> its tail', much
> like Greek <ailouros> 'waving-tailed'. It is near
> my bedtime, so
> details of this hypothesis will follow later.
>
> Douglas G. Kilday
>
There is supposed a Nubian form qadis (vel sim) but it
makes you wonder why no similar forms in Coptic or
Berber
Your explanation seems as good as any.
Who knows, perhaps Messapia was where cats first
arrived in Italy from Egypt


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