Re: Cremona (was: Ligurian Barga and */p/; was: Ligurian)

2012/6/20, dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...>:

>> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
>> > <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@> wrote:
>> (...) What matters
>> is that both the Po (as everybody knows: Bodincus, Padus, Eridanus)
>> and the Adda (Lexua) did have more than one name (still in the Middle
>> Age) and accordingly a different name for every stretch from an
>> important confluence to another one, not to speak of the names of
>> different branches.
>> Anyway, I recall the point of departure of our discussion: If You
>> dislike the garlic-etymology You can choose the rock one or anything
>> Pre-Latin You prefer, the point is anyway on the origin of -o:na.

> DGK:
> First, regarding the Po, I know of no evidence that natives ever called it
> Eridanus. That was the poetic name of a mythical river.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

It was the name of river in Athens as well. You are assuming the
Greeks simply gave a mythical name to the river near Adria; but they
ordinarily kept quite well local river-names wherever they settled,
or, at least, preferred transparent names (maybe direct translations,
maybe not), but quite rarely purely myhical names like e.g. Styx.
Of course, there are instances like Akh'ero:n, but these - like Styx
- end up as normal PIE river-names (maybe at least partially with
adstrate phonology, e.g. *h1g'heront-). If this were the case with
Adriatic Eridanos, we would come back to the same question: where did
it come from?
I, as expected, find the Celtic etymology of Eridanos
(*h'eperi-dh2no-s 'East River') convincing; nevertheless, as per
above, this is irrelevant to our question, because this latter raises
anyway with just two ancient local names for the Po, Bodincus and
Padus.

> DGK:
> What we do know is
> that Ligurians called the upper part of it Bodegkos/Bodincus, and the lower
> part was called Padus. What this means is that Ligurians reached the river
> from the west and named it, and some non-Ligurian group reached the river
> from the east and named it something else, and subsequent groups used the
> existing non-Ligurian name.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
Any Ligurian etymology of Bodincus (be it from PIE *bheudh- 'bottom'
or *bhedh- 'dig') is indistinguishable from a Celtic one (please don't
reply that the first of these roots is scarcely represented in Insular
Celtic lexicon, because the same holds true for a great part of
river-names all over Celtic lands, whereas another great part of
river-names in the same areas does exhibit Celtic lexical material, so
every conclusion can be drawn: stratification of Celtic and non-Celtic
but also, conversely, loss of lexical items in the subsequent history
of Insular Celtic).
A good Celtic etymology for Padus is Hubschmied's one (: Old Norse
hvatr 'swift', Pokorny 636), in my opinion the best one among many
proposals that have been made. Quite surely we don't agree on any of
these etymologies, but this can be another thread, the point is again
on the very existence of more than one name for the same river.

> DGK:
> There is ABSOLUTELY NO GROUND for asserting that every stretch of a river
> had a different name. In fact, such an assumption flies in the face of your
> homogenist model. You envision uniform PIE-speakers settling (or being
> divinely created) over a very large area, and since rivers serve as routes
> for travel, there is no basis whatever for a uniform stratum of speakers to
> assign multiple names. The only reason for multiple naming is
> ethnolinguistic heterogeneity, which your model denies for pre-Roman times,
> although you are willing to admit enclaves of conservatism to explain
> Porcobera and the Plinii. Thus your model should yield only such variants
> as the Duero/Douro. It cannot account for Bodincus/Padus and the like.
>

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

You are mixing two arguments. If we discuss of multiple naming of
different stretches, a very good reason for it is the need of
distinguishing such stretches, just like different stretches of one
and the same street bear different names (even at one or two km
distance) according to the people who dwell or work along it or to
other features.
When You refer to ethnolinguistic heterogeneity, You are indeed
recalling instances like Duero/Douro (different phonological outputs
from the same name), although in any case inside a common genealogical
origin (like the Porcoberans and the Plinys on one side and the [rest
of] Cisalpine Celts on the other side), while - as You have written -
a name for the upper course and another one for the lower course of
the same river are exactly what is needed in order to refer, in one
and the same community, to such different parts.
Usually people colonize rivers' valleys upwards and they need a name
for the lower part of the valley and another one for the upper part.
Should You seriously argue that everything that has a hyperonymic name
cannot have different hyponymic names for each part of it (unless by
different ethnolinguistic communities), Your argument would be
patently absurd, since the lowest limit for naming differentiation is
at microscopical scale, not at a miles' size (otherwise one and the
same family couldn't a have a name for the first floor of its home and
a different one for the second floor - they should call everything
simply "home"). I cannot believe You really mean that, I think You are
joking.

(...)

>
>> >> As for Derto:na, my own etymology *Dher-to-pon-ah2 'slowly river'
>> >> would refer to the moor of the Scrivia river in the plain between
>> >> Arquata and Tortona.
>>
>> > DGK:
>> > So why was the RIVER not called that?
>>
>> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>>
>> I've never stated that the river wasn't called that. Nobody can
>> assert that it wasn't called that. My hypothesis implies that it was
>> indeed so named.
>> Facts are that Derto:na is the name of the town's territory (not
>> simply of the town) and that this territory was a big marsh formed the
>> Scrivia river.
>> If Scrivia is from *skrei- 'curve', such an etymology applies very
>> aptly to its upper course, much less to the plain North of Arquata.
>> So, why not a different name for this section of the river?

> DGK:
> Because rivers are used for travel, and giving rivers PROPER names is (to my
> knowledge) a linguistic universal. Ask yourself why ANYTHING has a proper
> name. Instead of saying "Let's paddle up the fishy river to the shining
> river to the swampy river to the sandy river to the pebbly river to the
> birchy river to the waterfally river, then portage over to the other
> waterfally river and paddle down to the oaky river to the beechy river to
> the twisty river to the bitter river to the broad river to the sea",
> IE-speakers could say "Let's paddle up the Albantia to the waterfall,
> portage over to the Brigantia, and paddle down to the sea". Done!

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

The first description is much better in order to identify settlements
and specific points of the river course - in absence of maps and other
written indicators - just like civic numbers are much more precise
than a mere street name. Different names for rivers' stretches are
like more or less descriptive proper names for dwellings along one
road in absence of civic numbers.
They had no need of having only one name for an entire river course;
they knew that the *Skreiwiah2 'flows' into the *Derto-ponah2.
Moreover, a distinction between stretches is more intuitive, because
at a confluence of two equally big rivers it's really difficult to
distinguish which is the principal one, so it's much better to coin a
third name for their unified course (and so on recursively).

>
>> >> Vero:na < *Wei-ro-pon-ah2 'curved river' lies exactly on the great
>> >> curve of the Adige.
>>
>> > DGK:
>> > So why was the RIVER not called that?
>>
>> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>>
>> If You repeat the question, it becomes a more general question. Do
>> You admit that rivers can have had more names than today (I think You
>> do), therefore that these names can refer to different sections of the
>> river - corresponding to territorial units - and survive as
>> territorial names when one river-name wins over the other ones for the
>> same river?

> DGK:
> The only reason to admit that would be to admit greater ethnolinguistic
> heterogeneity then than now, which again your model denies. And it is quite
> remarkable that 3 for 3 of your -o:na-names involve NO EVIDENCE that the
> rivers were EVER called that.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

I've jut cited three examples for areal reasons. If You desire the
founding material, it's constituted by plenty of /-o:ne/-RIVER-names
(sometimes in correspondence with -ate-ford names on the same rivers,
like Vellone [Varese] < *welno-ponos 'good water' by Velate <
*welno-h1ah2tu-s, Caldone [Lecco] < *kah2udo-pono-s 'posterior water'
by Acquate < Coade < *kah2udo-h1yah2tu-s)

>
>> >> Inherited *-o:na: did shift to *-a:na: in non-praedial
>> >> -ana-place-names (e.g. Brutana)
>>
>> > DGK:
>> > Good. Since we know there was an inherited *-o:na: (becoming Gaulish
>> > *-a:na:), there is no problem assigning o:na:-names to the pre-Gaulish
>> > IE
>> > languages.
>>
>> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>>
>> There's never any problem in assigning regular outputs to their
>> possible linguistic affiliations. Problems raise after that. First of
>> all, competing assignments cause the debate to remain unsolved.
>> Secondly, co-occurrence of different strata in one and the same
>> territory implies the question of a possible chronological sequence.
>> Let's start with the second problem. You like stratifications. In
>> order to prove a stratification, You have to solve the first problem
>> in favour of the co-occurrence solution. The it comes to chronological
>> priority. I think You assume Ligurian precedes Celtic, maybe because
>> You assign everything Celtic to the Gaulish immigrations about the
>> middle of the I. millennium BCE and maybe also because You infer that,
>> since Ligurian appear to have disappeared all over Europe before than
>> Continental Celtic in turn disappeared, it must have also preceded as
>> to its starting point (just as if strata were persons of different
>> generations), but since You usually recognize Ligurian names by their
>> absence of Celtic features (sometimes You postulate Gaulish remaking
>> of Ligurian names, but all instances can be reversed as to
>> chronological succession) You have to give a better proof of the
>> chronological priority of the allegedly non-Celtic Ligurian stratum.
>> (As for me, I've tried to argue in favour of direct lineage from PIE
>> to Gaulish in situ and this would at least exclude chronological
>> seriority of Celtic).
>> The first problem cannot be solved because Your theory isn't
>> falsifiable. Since You are free to assign to Celtic everything that
>> anywhere doesn't fit in Your (and Kretschmer's and d'Arbois' and so
>> on) Ligurian, please tell me what on Earth could even theoretically
>> convince You that You may be wrong.

> DGK:
> Alternative etymologies based on REAL Celtic, not your Frankensteinian
> construction involving body parts from other languages, in short
> Franken-Celtic.

Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:

Apart from Proper Liguria, which is precisely the matter of our
contention, I'm systematically picking my examples from regions
inhabited by people who spoke Celtic languages, dressed in a Celtic
faschion, worshipped Celtic Gods (in the sense of Gods normally
worshipped by Celts) and called themselves Celts. Nothing strange if
they had a common origin. Maybe (who knows?) in fact they didn't, but
nevertheless my hypothesis is the simplest possible one.
Rather, it's You who try to split one body into two. Maybe (who
knows?) You are right, but Your hypothesis is certainly more complex
than my (nevertheless still possible) one.
Anyway, even alternative etymologies based on real Celtic for Your
taste wouldn't convince You, because You are already persuaded that
Celts have lived in Celtic countries (wow), so on that matter we
completely agree; what we disagree on is 1) that they were there since
PIE times (and in this sense my question remains: suppose You were,
ehm, wrong, what kind of demonstration would You accept for an IE
continuity for Celts?) and 2) that non-Celtic Ligurian *innovations*
aren't compelling (and they really aren't, don't You think?)