Re: Celtic Ligurian? (was: Ligurian)

From: Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
Message: 69651
Date: 2012-05-19

2012/5/18, dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...>:
>
> If Matasovic' is correct in deriving Celt. *barro- 'point, top' by
> normalizing an old root-noun *bHr.s-, nom. sg. *bHo:rs, he appears to
> support your position.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

A Celtic sequence /-ars-/ is unfortunately doomed to remain
ambiguous, since PIE */-rs-/ would have the same outcome and a
thematic noun with zero-grade root + *-o- (*bhr-s-o-) would be
commonplace.
Since every /-orC-/ could be equally well or even better analyzed as
short /o/ grade, I'm afraid the only possible evidence for Celtic
/-arC-/ < PIE */-o:rC-/ can be /-arT-/ sequences; cf. following OIr.
lexemes:
barc 'wood' : Cz., Sln., Sr.-Kr. brk, Ru. bérce, bérco
carbat : *(s)kerbh-
cart : (s)ker-
garb : *gerb-
mart 'killing; ox' : *mer- 'die'
sart : OEngl. sweard
-scart- (verb) : *skerH- 'separate' (zero-grade would yield †*-scráth-)

Also marg f., an alleged Scandinavism (mǫrk), but -g can at least
suggest Urverwandtschaft
>>
>> Long /o:/ in final syllable yields long /u:/ in Celtic as well
>> (since you don't ascribe Lepontic to Celtic), while Your transfer of
>> the (modified) law (in that You assume that the whole diphthong is
>> monophthongized) to the inner of the word would be only Lepontic, but
>> ad hoc (this, I repeat, is not per se bad, but weaker than a treatment
>> that can have at least a parallel in Celtic) and above all at variance
>> with Ornavasso Latumarui with /-ma:ro-/ < PIE *moh1-ro-, whose /a:/ <
>> PIE */o:/ is typically Celtic
>
> DGK:
> I do not object to Gaulish personal names in Lepontic (in my view, Ligurian)
> inscriptions.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

This means we have to wait for an inscription of, say, -600, with
words like *LANOM 'full' / 'plain', *TANOM /da:non/ 'gift' and so
on...
In the meantime, it would be fair to find traces of preserved PIE
long */e:/ in Lepontic inscriptions, otherwise the question is bound
to remain open
>
>> > DGK:
>> > (...) the best explanation I have of Lep. <pala> 'grave' is /bala:/ < *gWlh1-eh2 from
>> > *gWelh1- 'to swallow up, gulp down' (cf. Grk. <deletron>, <delear> 'fishing
>> > bait'). In an inhumating society, the ground swallows up the dead.
>>
>> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>> Good etymology. So, nothing to do with Lusitanian Trebopala?
>
> DGK:
> Not in my opinion. Four years ago in message #58889 I argued (pace M.
> Prosper Avril) that this (apparently) divine name means 'Village-Feeder' vel
> sim., the second element being identical to Skt. -pa:la- 'shepherd', and
> derived from *peh2- 'to guard, protect, take care of, feed, etc.' This
> could very well be the epithet of a river-goddess. It means the penult of
> TREBOPALA must be long (which, sadly, we cannot determine).

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

A nice match to Trebopala is maybe Trepalle / Trepal(l), 1360 de
Trepallo, hamlet's name near Livigno (Sondrio, Lombardy), on an Alpine
pass across the watershed between Inn and Adda basins. It's Europe's
highest village to be inhabited all the year long.
With my interpretations of <pala> (almost identical, apart from
lengthened grade, to the one by Patrizia Solinas 1995: 321 *kwolh1-ah2
'circular [tomb]') and Trebopala, I analyze it as *Treb-o-kwo:lh1-o-s
'a pass with a village', in my opinion an apt motivation for its
location, but I realiza that this is just a possibility among many
ones.
(In case of a discussion on this topic, I suggest a new thread; it
scarcely has anything to do with the linguistic affiliation of proper
Ligurians)


> DGK:
> Science is stymied by Pan-Celticism.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

I can't argument in favour of or against other people's Pan-Celticism.
As a Eurasianist, I tend to avoid any idea of a somewhat hegemonic
rôle by a linguistic class or family; whatever is positively
affiliated to a linguistic class in Protohistory can also, at least as
a working hyopthesis, be reasonably ascribed to the same class in
Prehistory. So, for instance, I've proposed quite a number of PIE
etymologies through Venetic and / or Italic phonology in Eastern
Cisalpine and the Apennine Peninsula respectively, through Slavonic
phonology for (North-Western) Ukrainian, Western Russian,
Byelorussian, (Central and Eastern) Polish, and even Slovak
place-names, but Thracian, Daco-Mysian, Illyrian, Dalmatian, and
Pannonian etymologies for South Slavic place-names; I believe in the
PIE origin of Germanic place-names in Northern Germany (following
Krahe) and of course Scandinavia (with Bengt Pamp), of Greek
place-names in Greece (like Georgiev), and so on.
My favourite fields are Hamito-Semitic and Indo-European linguistics
and I have accordingly interpreted their respective most ancient
toponymic layers, with just two partial exceptions for Northern Africa
and the Near East, where I'm persuaded of the existence of a
Pre-Hamito-Semitic Indo-European (in the Near East specifically
Anatolian) susbstrate.
As for Celtic, I've always limited myself to the regions other people
had already recognized as such; I'm particularly interested in
investigating borderlines and so I've proposed a Celtic word-to-word
explanation (at least equally correct as the traditional Phoenician
one) for Plato's Atlantidean etymology of Gadeiron / Cádiz, I've
written a book on Celtic ethnonyms in Ukraine and Moldavia and I've
tried to identify the most Southern Celtic place-names in the Apennine
Peninsula (in this case, of course, with more or less clear traces of
a Pre-Celtic South Picene substrate).
So, when I include most Ancient Ligurians in the broad frame of
Continental Celticity, I simply follow what Mrs. Petracco Sicardi
already used to teach, at the same Department where I work; when I
have doubts upon Pre-Indo-European substrates in Europe, I simply
follow what my Teacher J. Hubschmid had come to think in his last
years (in Heidelberg), viz. that all the Caucasian items he had so
long been investigating were the result of remote interlinguistic
processes in the Near East.

>
> DGK:
> I do not understand your -ate-place-name argument, although I had no trouble
> understanding and accepting your argument about Valtl. <verca>.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

Maybe it can be reduced to a few independent issues:
1) Do You agree that -ate-place-names in Romance countries with
Celtic substrate correspond to Gallo-Romance -at- / -é- place-names?
2) Do You agree that -ate-place-names with a river name as their
derivational basis are situated on prehistorical fords?
3) Do You agree that -ate-place-names have exact matches in Irish Áth-names?
4) Do You agree that, of the two correct (and, in my humble opinion,
both real) etymologies for Irish áth, the one with motivation 'going'
fits better than the one with motivation 'breaking' the reference to a
ford?
5) Do You agree that a Celtic compound *[River Name]-o-ja:tus would
have yielded Romance †*-oggiàte et sim. instead of *-àte?
6) Do You agree that a PIE compound *[River Name]-o-h1yah2-tu-s would
have yielded Celtic *-a:tu-s?

I think that the first three passages can be positively answered by
anyone. N° 4 is somewhat puzzling, but has the least weight on the
whole issue. N° 5 implies an almost inescapably positive answer, at
least to my limited knowledge; so, only n° 6 is really crucial.
It's made of three passages:
6.1) Old Indic ya:tu- has a word-initial laryngeal (*/h1/)
6.2) *-o-HyV- yields *-o:yV- even in compound junction
6.3) *-o:ya:- yields Celtic *-a:-ja:- > *-a:-
N° 6.1. depends on etymology; n° 6.2. is proven by e.g. Old Indic
Viçva:mitra-; n° 6.3. is proven by Celtic *-i-stem nom. pl. *-ey-es >
*-e:s > *-i:s.
After all, the weakest point is the etymology of Late IE *ya:- 'go'

> DGK:
> Now, how do you deal with Hubschmied's Rhaetic *plo:ro- = Celt. *la:ro- =
> Gmc. *flo:ra- (ZRPh 62:116-7, 1942)? This looks like clear evidence for
> another pre-Celtic Alpine stratum, namely Rhaetic (clearly IE, against those
> who see it as Etruscoid).
>
Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

It's noteworthy that J. U. Hubschmied himself, despite his son's
opinion, a few years later came to believe that Rhaetic was indeed
Etruscoid.
Anyway, in his 1942 paper, his evidence (that I read only on p. 117,
the bottom of p. 116 being devoted to the highly convincing comparison
of Pli:nius with Lith. plynas by Robert v. Planta - I've seen many
times the inscription of the Plinii Calui in Como) comprised Plur,
name of fields or meadows near Mals, Taufers, Tartsch, and Innsbruck,
and the Romauntsch hexonym Plurs for Piur(o) in Valchiavenna (Sondrio,
Lombardy).
This latter starts to be registered as Pluri in 1092 (then in 1137,
1141, 1144, 1155, 1171; 1170 Plurium, 1238 Plurio), but the form with
/j/ was already in use since 973 (unless to be read <Prore>) and in
any case in 1155 Piuro (1144, 1187, 1191 Puri, Purio). The first sure
reading is 1021 Prore (same in 1125). Either is Pluri dissimilated or
is Prore an assimilation form; anyway, Prore (1025, perhaps already
973) antedates Pluri, and even in the case the attestation of 973
isn't Prore but Piore the form with /pl-/ looks like a restitution of
an already #pj-sounding anlaut (note that in 973 the palatalization
/pl/ > /pj/ had not yet taken place, so the restitution of 1092 is
very probably a false one, just in the phase of the sound change).
Since the central village of Piur(o) is named Prosto, a connection
between both names is highly probable. Pro-sto looks like Celtiberian
Pouśtom (= Lombard Busto < *Bousto-), but the local form of Piuro is
Piur [pjy:r], at variance with the /o/ of Prore (which should have
given [u:]). My hypothesis is that both [pjy:r] < *Plu:ri: (if
dissimilated from *Pru:ri:? The variants Puri and Purio would show
/#CV-/ < /#CrV-/ like the local surnames Fanco- < Franco-) and <Prore>
< *Pro:ri: can go back to a compound *Pro:-u(i)ri: 'men of *pro:-',
where *pro:- = *kwroyo- (> Old Irish (t-ind-s-)cra-) = Old Indic
krayá- 'price'; the *Pro:-u(i)ri: would have been Salesmen and
*Pro-sto- their marketplace (as today is).
The other four occurrences of Plur (all quite far more Eastwards, in
Tyrol) can plausibly continue *plo:ro-, but note that J.U. Hubschmied
thought tha his Rhaetic (quite similar to Pokorny's (Veneto-)Illyrian,
nowadays Anreiter's Ostalpenindogermanisch) had /o:/ < /a:/ like
Germanic, therefore a non-Celtic innovation, while the very etymology
simply shows retention of PIE long */o:/ and Anreiter himself clearly
distinguishes OAIdg. /a/ < PIE short */o/ from the conservative
treatment of PIE long */o:/.
All in all, we come for the third time back to the same analysis: in
Genoa's Hinterland, in the Orobian valleys (possible Heimat of the
Plinii), and in Middle and Northern Tyrol we find retention of PIE
*/p/ (in Tyrol of long */o:/ as well), but never sure non-Celtic
innovations