Re: Res: Res: [tied] Latin animals' names -R (rhotacism?)

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet"
<fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:

>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> >
> > The weakness of my explanation is that I have not found evidence

that

> > <accipiter> ORIGINALLY referred only to headfirst-falling birds

of

> > prey and was later generalized to similar birds. Nevertheless,
> > the 'fast flier' explanation overlooks the fact that many birds

fly

> > fast, such as the <swift>, which is not hawk-like at all, and
> > the 'acceptor' explanation could equally well apply to eagles,

owls,

> > and indeed all predatory birds. Both of these also suffer from
> > phonetic difficulties more severe than a simple haplology.
> >
> > DGK
> >
> =
> This is like saying that blackbirds are not the only one bird to

be black.

> Actually female blackbirds are brown.
>
> I don't know if it's been point at,
> but such a syntagm as *ad-caput-pet-
> should be followed by -â- in Latin,
> like in prae-caput-â- > precipita-te
> In that case, accipi-pit- should be **accipitâ-rius or the like.

That is a different adjectival formation.

> I can't see what's wrong with a simple fast-flyer > accipiter ?

What generates the geminate? Paulus ex Festo cites
<acupedius> 'swift of foot'. How do you get <accipiter> from
*acupeter without at least one ad-hoc process? The same goes for
attempts to twist around <o:cius>, or its presumed positive, into
the first element. Haplology is itself an ad-hoc explanation, but
in my opinion it is the least jarring of the several which have been
proposed for this word.

DGK