Re: Basque mendi 'mountain'

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "bmscotttg" <bm.brian@...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <bm.brian@>
> > wrote:
>
> >> At 5:07:45 AM on Wednesday, March 28, 2012, Torsten wrote:
>
> >>> Irish is full of words in p-.
>
> >> OIr has a very modest number of words in <p->, most of which
> >> are rather obvious borrowings.
>
> > Sorry that I didn't answer before.
> > Considering that their number is very modest I thought I would
> > place them here, [...]
>
> But you didn't. You listed words from the modern language.

As Kuhn points out
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/49825?var=0&l=1
you would not expect words in p- in older sources, therefore later varieties are relevant. Irish is a geographically isolated language. In its neighborhood we know only other Insular Celtic languages (but words in p- in q-Celtic languages shouldn't be there in the first place, and words from *kW- in p-Celtic languages are only part of those in p-) and English (but words in p- in Germanic are themselves loans). Thus even those words that also occur in English are not necessarily loans from English to Irish, they might be direct loans to Irish from the same substrate language that suopplied those loans to English and other Germanic languages. The suspicion that the latter is the case is increased by the fact that many loans in p- recur in several Insular Celtic languages. As for the idea that the words are spontaneous creation of the Irish-speakers, given the number of unexplained words in p-, that idea would undermine the foundation of historical linguistics itself.

> Sticking to OIr would at least have eliminated most of the
> obvious borrowings from English.

See above.

> And if you were actually interested in anything but making a
> rhetorical point, you'd have done some winnowing on your own.

I placed them all there for future reference. I trusted you would be capable of recognizing words which recur in English on you own.

> In any case, we've seen a lot of these before,

And they haven't gone away in the meanwhile.

> and I'm not going to do your work for you again.

No, Brian, explaining away counter-evidence to your claims is *your* job, not mine.


Torsten