Re: Basque mendi 'mountain'

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Francesco Brighenti" <frabrig@...> wrote:

>
> > Basque mendi comes from Paleo-Basque *bendi, with regular
> > nasalization of *b- due to the following nasal. This is an old
> > substrate root *pant-/*pent- also found in toponymy as *pend-/*penn-
> > (e.g. Pennines, Apennines), as well as in Celtic *bendo- 'peak,
> > top' and Germanic *pint-/*pinn- 'point'.
>
> John Bengtson at http://tinyurl.com/837q4xq reconstructs Proto-Basque *mendi (not **bendi) ‘mountain’ and cites one of the greatest Burushaski specialists, the late Hermann Berger, who compared the Bq. lexeme to Bur. bun(d)- ‘mountain pasture, mountain grove, boulder; wild, mountain’. This is what Berger writes in this respect:
>
> http://tinyurl.com/7myhhvb
> http://tinyurl.com/7473fgm
>
> He, thus, thought that Bur. bun, pl. bundo (Verčik dialect: bonju) ‘rock, mountain’ < *mend-o ~ Bq. mendi ‘mountain’. Hence, there was no initial /b/ in the Proto-Vasco-Caucasian(-Burushaski) word, if there ever was one.
>

I'm afraid Bengston is mistaken, because nasalization of *b- before a following nasal is regular in Basque. This is why we'vr got the forms mendoitz (LN) 'slope', mendotz (*B) 'hill' contrasting with pendoitz (HN, LN) 'abyss', (HN, Bazt, L, LN) 'slope', whose initial *p- indicates they weren't inherited from Paleo-Basque but borrowed from another variety.

In a different variety (probably Paleo-Iberian), the cluster *-nt-/-nd- lost its nasal and gave Basque patar (L, Bazt, S, R, Z) 'steepy terrain' as well as the toponymy element *beda 'mountain' in the ancient oronyms Idu-beda, Lau-beda, Ortos-peda.

The problem of Bengtson's etymologies  is he chose to entirely bypass Paleo-Basque, the variety spoken in Gallo-Roman times and ancestor to modern Basque, which was first reconstructed by Mitxelena.

> > The substrate root *pant-/*pent- is found in Hispanic and Italian
> > toponymy meaning either ‘mountain’ or ‘ravine’ (e.g. South Italian
> > pentuma)...
>
> The medieval Italian substrate words panta ~ penta ~ pente ~ pentuma ~ pentoma ~ pendova ~ pentema ~ pendeme ~ pendima ‘large boulder, rock’ (in some areas) or ‘sloping ground, steep slope, ravine’ (in other areas), occurring in toponyms as either free-standing words or members of a compound, are found in dialects of Sardinia, Corsica, Sicily, Liguria, Latium, Lucania, and Apulia. Some Italian linguists have posited a “Mediterranean” substrate word *penta-/*panta- as the etymon of all such terms. Cf. also Etruscan penth(u)na ‘cippus stone’ (?). I see that an Italian author has even thrown in the Greek oronym Pindos.
>
> I personally vote for *penta-/*panta- as a substrate, that is, non-IE word used in Italian toponymy, but I would divorce it from Basque mendi (see above).
>

IMHO this is a Vasco-Caucasian root related to NEC *be:nggwa 'rock, mountain; ravine'.