Re : [tied] Re: Negau

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, patrick cuadrado <dicoceltique@...>
wrote:

>
> what do you think about
> celtic LEUGA  (lieue in french = measure) = Plough Germanic
> league (n.2)
> "distance of about three miles," 1387, from L.L. leuga (cf. Fr.

lieue, Sp. legua, It. lega), said by L. writers to be from Gaulish. A
vague measure (perhaps originally an hour's hike) never in official
use in England, where the record of it is more often poetic than
practical.

>
> Pat

FWIW my comments: an Old English <plo:g/plo:h> according to Bosworth-
Toller was "what a yoke of oxen could plough in a day, a plough-
land"; the former ("in a day", and often taken as 1 acre) could
perhaps correspond (?) to a league if measured in a straight line,
but it was regarded as a measure of area of land, not length. A
plough-land, as a measure, was what a team of eight oxen could plow
in a year, and usually taken as 120 acres (= 1 "hide").

I assume you take Celtic *leuga as from an original *pleuga, the
latter hypothetically the source of Gmc *plo:ga- and Slavic *plugU.
But from the above comments I would say it seems highly unlikely that
such a Celtic word would be the source of the Germanic and Slavic
words (and the transfer from a unit of measurement to a tool seems
even more unlikely to me, regardless of the OE and NE words, which
seem to be discontinuous (NE <plough> prob. < ON <plógr>) -- it seems
probable that the OE word developed its meaning from the
original "tool" meaning, not the other way around, based on the
word's meaning in all other languages in which it occurs).

AJ

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> --- In cybalist@... s.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@> wrote:
> >
> > On 2008-09-27 17:53, tgpedersen wrote:
> >
> > > Zbigniew Gol/a,b: The Origin of the Slavs, pp 366-8
> >
> > > ...First of all it should be stated that Germc. *plo:ga-, the
> > > alleged source of PSlav. plugU, has no convincing etymology in
> > > that linguistic group, so it is unmotivated from the Germanic
> > > standpoint. Besides that, it was primarily restricted to German.
> >
> > I agree that it has no internal Germanic etymology, but I don't

see

> > why it should be regarded as restricted to German, primarily or
> > otherwise.
> > <plo:g ~ plo:h> is found in Old English, <plógr> in Old

Icelandic.

> > The OE word was used mainly as a measure of area in the preserved
> > texts ('a plough of land'), but there's nothing German about it.
>
> I don't see that either. However Dansk Etymologisk Ordbog seems to
> agree, for whatever reason:
> 'plov en; glda. plogh, no., sv. plog, oldnord. plógr m., mnty.

plo:ch,

> oldhty. pfluoh, ty. Pflug; oldeng. plo:h, plo:g 'plovland', eng.
> plough er lånt fra nord.; jf. longobard. plo:vum, plo:vus.
>
> Af omstridt oprindelse. Ordet synes i Skandinavien, hvor det
> fortrænger ard, at være lånt fra Tyskland. Dersom det er germ.,

kan

> det høre til sa. rod som II. pleje og pløk, Snarere er germ.

*plo:Gum,

> *plo:hum dog måske en betegn. for 'hjulploven' , der skyldes lån

fra en

> mlat. form besl. med nord-ital. ploxemum 'vognkurv' og lat.
> plaustrum, plo:strum 'fragtvogn'. Fra germ. er ordet lånt østpå:

lit.

> pl:~ugas, oldkirk. plugU. â€" Jf. pløje.
>
> Litt.:
> Jost Trier: Pflug. Beitr. LXVII (1944-45) 110-150. â€"
> Heinrich Wagner i Etymologica. (Tübingen 1958) 835-838. â€"
> W. Mitzka i ZAA VI (1958) 113-118. -
> S. Potter i Prace filologiczne XVIII (1964) 103-108. -
> Ragnar Jirlow: Die Geschichte des schwedischen Pfluges. (Sthlm.

1970). â€"

> V Pisani: Indogermanisch und Europa. (München 1974) 48-50.'
>
> I suspect the Langobard. -v- reflects -w- of the

source, 'naturalized'

> as -G- in Germanic, cf -g- < -G- < -w- (according to some!) in Slav.
> adj m.n. gen.
>
> Torsten
>