Re: Latin re:ne:s 'kidneys'

From: Rick McCallister
Message: 64220
Date: 2009-06-19



--- On Fri, 6/19/09, dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...> wrote:

From: dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...>
Subject: [tied] Re: Latin re:ne:s 'kidneys'
To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Date: Friday, June 19, 2009, 5:18 PM

--- In cybalist@... s.com, Octavià Alexandre <oalexandre@ ...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@... s.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@ > wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@... s.com, Octavià Alexandre oalexandre@
> wrote:
> > >
> > > This is why I regard *sreneh2/4- 'hip' as more adequate to explain
> > > the Latin word. Futhermore, Basque has errain, errein- 'kidneys'
> (with
> > > protetic e- because Basque doesn't allow for rhotics at
> > > word-initial) from a lost IE language (Italoid aka IE-Ligurian) .
> > >
> > > Perhaps the liquid *s- was simply dropped. In that case, the root
> should
> > > be *(s)reneH2/4- . It still seems to me the most likely etymology for
> > > Latin re:ne:s.
> >
> > Why would Ligurian *rena: lengthen its stem-vowel and become an
> /i/-stem (gen. pl. <re:nium> several times in Plin.) upon borrowing by
> Latin? What parallels do you have for the semantic transition 'hip' >
> 'kidney'?
>
> IE *sre:neH2/4- (with long /e:/, sorry for the misquotation) is
> reflected in Iranian (Avestan ra:na- 'the outer part of the leg, thigh',
> Persian ra:n 'thigh') and Baltic (Lithuanian stre:na 'loin, hip, leg ',
> pl. stre:no:s 'both hips, both thighs; cross, lumbar, hip area, the
> cross, (for horses) croup, crupper; (dialectal) hip or sacrum, back, or
> dorsal fin').

All right, no problem with the ROOT-vowel (which I misnamed). But the words above all refer to skeletal/structural parts, not internal organs.

> The Basque forms are errain 'kidneys, loins', errein-ezur 'sacrum' (a
> compound with ezur 'bone').

If Latin <re:ne:s> had been borrowed into Basque, would we expect *errene? Is remodeling into <errain> possible by analogy with some other lexeme? If your Ligurian *re:na: had been borrowed into Basque at an earlier date, is there evidence that it could have produced <errain> without remodeling?

DGK

The problem with *errene and *rena is that Basque tends to swallow /-n-/. Something needs to account for the /ñ/ of <errain> /errañ/ instead of expected *errei. Would an intermediate *errenese > *errense work?