What kind of horse celts and germans would have in common? Ponies? Working Horses? Proto-Germanic and Proto-Celtic point to a "Pre-Germanic/Pre-Celtic" *marko-. If we assume that Germans borrowed it from Celts, *k>x>h implies an old shift; assuming that Celts borrowed it from Germans, *x>k seems implausible. If both people borrowed it from a common Pre-WIE source, we must look for another example out of these languages. If *marko- is related to Asian *mor-, we might postulate a Sarmatian, Scythian or any similar "missing link". WIE *markos sounds like *pork^os, should we presume similar distribuition? *Pork^os was more widespread (porcus, farhaz, orkos, etc.). Is there any example of Italic *markos? Could *markos designate the mounted horse (for riding) versus the wagon-horse PIE *ek^wos? Both Celts
and Germans inherit and mantain this *ek^wo- word for the horse (*equos, *ehwaz), so *marko- would not enter as a word for "horse", but for some particular kind of horse. Let's consider the parallel development of Latin equus in Romance, when the usual and "regular" word was replaced by an alien caballus, who would mean some particular kind of horse, later generalized (cf. Slavic kobyla, Persian kaval, Turkish jaby, Finnish hebo). Frederik Kortlandt in LABIALS, VELAKS AND LABIOVELARS IN
GERMANIC ( https://openaccess.leidenuniv.nl/bitstream/1887/1927/1/344_104.pdf ) postulated kabh- < *hek^W- ((AI) 'European' words with α-vocalism and frequent voiced aspirates, e.g. *bhabh- 'bean', *bhardh- 'beard', *bhar(e)s- 'barley', *ghasdh- 'rod', perhaps *sam(a)dh- 'sand'.).
JS Lopes
De: Tavi <oalexandre@...>
Para: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
Enviadas: Sábado, 5 de Junho de 2010 5:48:30
Assunto: [tied] Re: marko- = horse non IE ?
--- In cybalist@... s.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...> wrote:
>
> > I see no plausible semantical connection between 'horse'
> > and 'market'... Rather than "highly tentative", I find your
> > proposal "highly unlikely". Of course, dogmatists prefer pseudo-
> > etymologies like this one rather than admitting loanwords into their
> > sacred IE. IMHO, *marko- 'horse' has zero probability of being a
> > native IE word.
>
> Indded, it has long been suspected to be a Central Asian Wanderwort.
>
Yes, but my point -which you haven't addressed- is this isn't a Wanderwort but a substrate loanword.
The trap most scholars (including of course Blench) have fallen in is linking *marko- to Altaic *morV 'horse' instead of *n^argu 'young male deer/elk'. Apparently, it hasn't occurred to them that words designating the horse such as this one could be also applied to other species of ungulate mammifers (deers, elks, antelopes or even camels) of the Eurasian Steppes.
> See now the ingenious (but, I am afraid, quite fanciful) explanation devised by long-range linguist Roger Blench to account for the attestation of the term *marko- 'horse' in Celtic and Germanic only (of all IE languages of Europe):
>
> http://tinyurl. com/39xk3ot
>
Reading this work, I don't think his author would qualify himself as a "long-range linguist". He's more an ethnologist than a true linguist.
Regards,
Octavià Alexandre