Re[2]: [tied] Re: Neigh

At 8:13:00 AM on Wednesday, September 17, 2008, Jonathan
Morris wrote:

[...]

> I have a copy of V's book (can I have my money back?) and
> was waiting until my time in Purgatory to read it but was
> prompted by your query to read the entry on knife, et al.

> It's so transparently bullshit that it hardly deserves
> comment - but for the sake of due diligence:

[...]

> 2. On the one hand, V says the word must have passed into
> Old French late (p441) because you don't get 'chanif' but
> 'canif' - (which, btw shows a profound ignorance of
> Picard, which preserves k, and you'd expect to find canif
> if the word was coming from the Germanic) then it's
> borrowed from Old French into Middle English and from
> there into Old Norse, with "Old English/Old Norse
> bilingualism in the Danelaw contributing" (p.439) (sic).
> So it's unlikely to get to England before 1066,

To be fair, there are a few OE words borrowed from OFr
before the Conquest; <prut> ~ <prud> 'proud' comes to mind.
But there certainly aren't very many.

> years after the end of the Danelaw, but then goes straight
> into Old Norse and Icelandic. Can anyone take this
> seriously?

Not I. It's clear that by this point V. has succumbed to
the Brain Eater.

[...]

> --- Em ter, 16/9/08, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>
> escreveu:

[...]

> Unfortunately, the article is in German, but the abstract
> isn'r:

> 'Abstract

> Traditionally, Engl. knife and related Germanic words -
> Late OE cni:f, OFris. and MLG kni:f; MDu. cnijf (Du.
> knijf), ON knífr - have been derived from an unattested
> Germanic verbal root *knib- or, violating the sound laws
> and disregarding the semantic discrepancy, from the
> Germanic root *kni:p- 'to nip, pinch, squeeze'. The word
> is most commonly assumed to have originated in Old Norse
> and to have boon borrowed from there into Late Old English
> and the other Germanic languages, then from Old English
> into Old French as quenif, quanif 'pocket knife'; a
> diminutive cnivet, canivet formed in Old French is assumed
> to have traveled on into Provençal, Catalan, and other
> Romance languages (e.g. OSpan. cañivete 'small knife'),
> and finally into Basque as gaiñibeta, ganabeta, ganibet,
> kanibet, etc. '(pocket) knife, penknife' with different
> forms and meanings in the dialects.

> Ten reasons are given why this assumed itinary is wrong,
> among them the facts (1) that in the Middle Ages new
> cultural objects and their names do not travel from north
> to south but from south to north,

For obvious historical reasons the prevailing direction is
certainly south to north, but nothing makes this an
unbreakable rule.

<Cingler> 'to set sail', from ON <sigla> 'to sail'; <hauban>
'ropes supporting the mast', from ON <höfuðbendur>, plur. of
<höfuðbenda> 'mainstay'; <hune> 'platform resting on a
mast', from ON <húnn> 'the knob at the top of the masthead';
<ris> 'a reef (of sails)' (<prendre un ris> 'to reef
sails'), probably from ON <rif> 'a reef in a sail'. And
while it isn't quite a cultural object, there's <vague> 'a
wave', from ON <vágr> 'wave, sea'.

Moreover, if there was indeed a PGmc. *kni:Baz 'knife', it's
likely that OFr got the word from Frankish, hardly an
unfamiliar occurrence; a further spread into the Iberian
Romance dialects is also hardly surprising.

> (2) that the implied development of a monosyllabic simplex
> (kni:fr, knife) into an apparent compound of three or four
> syllables (gaiñibeta, ganibet), though not impossible, is
> at least peculiar,

Not when (1) OFr isn't very happy with /kn-/, and (2) the
<-et> is easily justified as an OFr addition. (Indeed, the
fact that the OFr word *does* occasionally appear as
<cnivet> points strongly to a borrowing from some Gmc.
dialect.)

> (3) that the presumed diminutive suffix -et of OFr.
> cnivet, canivet is also found in Germanic (West Fris.
> knyft '(large) pocket knife)', and

In one variety undoubtedly of relatively late attestation.
It really doesn't matter whether the <t> is epenthetic or
whether the word is influenced by or borrowed from
<c(a)nivet>: there's no reason to give it more weight than
the rest of the Gmc. forms combined.

I see that Torsten's now posted V.'s full discussion:

60. Epenthetisches -t ist denkbar, aber nicht naheliegend;
die Annahme einer Entlehnung von canivet mit Synkope der
unakzentuierten Erstsilbe +knivet), Initialakzentuierung
der verbleibenden Form nach germanischem Muster (+knivét)
und Synkope der nunmehrigen Zweitsilbe mit regressiver
Stimmtonassimilation ergibt westfries. knyft [knift] ohne
Zusatzannahmen.

The last two words are highly amusing.

> (4) that the entire set of words is left unexplained
> because the traditional Germanic etymologies are
> unacceptable.

If those are the best four, the other six hardly matter. A
wildly unlikely explanation (to put it kindly) is to be
preferred to none at all (even if that were the case)? Von
wegen!

But I can see why Torsten likes him.

Brian