Re: The oddness of Gaelic words in p-

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:

>
> At 6:00:34 PM on Saturday, June 14, 2008, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > Note BTW in
> > http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/KuhnText/01paik-

betr_gen.html

> > Irish 'Peacach, -aighe, a., sinful ; sm., a sinner' and
> > Breton 'Péc'hi, v. n. Pécher, transgresser la loi divine.'
>
> > One might argue that the Irish 'Peacadh, g. -aidh and
> > -ctha, pl. id., -aidhe and -aí, m., a sin, a
> > transgression, loosely anything deplorable' and the Breton
> > '*Péc'hed, s. m. Péché, faute contre Dieu.' are loans from
> > Latin pecca:tus. But what of the other forms?
>
> > Did the Irish and Breton extract a verb stem from the
> > Latin ppp?
>
> It wouldn't
> surprise me if the Breton verb were denominal within Breton.
>
> Brian
>

I haven't been following this, or any thread, for some time, having
restricted internet access and time where I'm presently at. So I may
misunderstand the discussion. However, I don't see any reason why the
Brit. verbal stem *pex- should no have been borrowed directly from
Latin.

A nice little Latin derivational system was borrowed by British
Celtic, namely *pex- 'to sin' (pecca:re), *pexOd 'a sin' (pecca:tu-),
*pexOdr, *pexadyr a sinner' (pecca:tor, pecca(:)to:rem). While the
reflexes of the agent noun suffix *-Odr, *-adyr became somewhat
productive in W, this did not happen in SWBrit., which is why a back-
formation (noun -> verb) seems unlikely.

Anders