Re: Ligurian

At 1:24:05 AM on Saturday, May 19, 2012, stlatos wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57"
> <dgkilday57@...> wrote:

>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <stlatos@>
>> wrote:

>>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57"
>>> <dgkilday57@> wrote:

>>>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <stlatos@>
>>>> wrote:

>>>>> Plenty of grave stones say only "pala" and the
>>>>> dative of the deceased; it's pala = stone, pruia =
>>>>> grave (even though both came from words for stone (w
>>>>> cairn > grave/etc.) in PIE, their meaning at the
>>>>> time is what matters).

>>>> Now THAT makes no sense. Anyone can see that a stone is
>>>> a stone. The only reason to mention a stone on a stone
>>>> is when the stone itself is significant. In most cases
>>>> it is not. Carving takes time and carving 'stone' on a
>>>> stone wastes it.

>>> Why do you continue to attempt to use logic to
>>> disprove things already known to be true? Plenty of
>>> items in all areas of IE have inscriptions that are
>>> only (or include) the name for the thing. Why carve
>>> "horna" on a horn?; it would save time not to.

>> HlewagastiR's 'Horn' happened to help the alliteration
>> along. That does not apply to most Lepontic cases of
>> <pala>.

> Well, keeping it in Gmc, what about a comb carved w
> "harja" ?

DR 207 U?

<http://www.runenprojekt.uni-kiel.de/abfragen/standard/deutung2_eng.asp?findno=20&ort=Vimose&objekt=kam,%20ben>

shows eight interpretations, most of which see it as a
personal name.

>>> As I said, the PIE meaning of the word was 'stone',
>>> and in time it came to refer to grave stones (perhaps
>>> still to others, too, but we can't tell from the ev.).
>>> Even if it primarily or only meant 'stone', it's the
>>> writing of both it and the name of the deceased (and
>>> sometimes more) that fulfills what is by custom needed
>>> on a grave. Are you saying that not only should they
>>> have only put the name of the deceased on it, but that
>>> they COULDN'T have done anything else because it's not
>>> logical to say 'X's stone' or 'X's grave' because it
>>> wastes space? They couldn't even write "this stone
>>> marks X's grave' because it included 'stone' ?

>> They COULD have done whatever they wanted. However, in
>> MOST such cases, 'stone' is not written. On Etruscan
>> tombstones, for example, <s^uthi> 'sepulchre' is quite
>> common, <penthna> 'stone' quite rare. If the choice in
>> interpreting Lepontic is between the repeatedly occurring
>> <pala> and the hapax <pruia> for these senses, the
>> rational choice is <pala> as 'sepulchre' (or simply
>> 'grave', since they were inhumers), and <pruia> as
>> 'stone'. Of course, <pruia> might have meant something
>> else; my interpretation of the text is tentative (as are
>> all others). But the bottom line is that reading <pala>
>> as 'stone' flies in the face of ordinary funerary
>> practice.

> It obviously does not. Again, Scandinavian burial insc.
> just refer to raising a "staina", not specified, instead
> of using a compound for grave stone, or some other word.

They aren't gravestones; they're memorial stones. Not
infrequently the person(s) memorialized died far away:

Sö 34:

Styrlaugr ok Holmr steina reistu at brœðr sína, brautu
næsta. Þeir enduðust í austrvegi, Þorkell ok Styrbjôrn,
þegnar góðir.

Styrlaug and Holm raised the stones next to the path in
memory of their brothers. They met their end on the
eastern route, Þorkel and Styrbjǫrn, good þegns.

Sometimes significance of the stone itself is clearly
stated:

Sö 11:

Freybjǫrn ok Guðrún þau réttu stein at Hróðmund, son sinn
snjallan, hér at mǫrku, Hróðgeirs bróðir. Guð hjalpi
ôndu. Œpir hjó rúnar. ... ...

Freybjǫrn and Guðrún, they erected the stone here as a
landmark in memory of Hróðmund, their able son, Hróðgeir's
brother. May God help (his) spirit. Œpir cut the runes
... ...

In a number of cases the memorial includes a bridge:

Ög 214:

Ulfr reisti stein þenna eptir Ófeig, fôður sinn, ok brú
þessa gerði.

Ulf raised this stone in memory of Ófeig, his father, and
made this bridge.

This tradition is clearly very different from the one that
you two are discussing.

> I'm not even trying to argue about what's most common,
> just against your statement it wasn't at all possible.

For the sake of arguing? There's not much point otherwise,
since you're responding to an argument that is now
explicitly probabilistic, however incautiously it may
originally have been stated.