Re: Lat. gladius and Sorothaptic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Ton Sales <ton.sales@...> wrote:

>
> I've been examining in detail what I told you Coromines had to say about
> gladius, and I now see I was completely misled. When he says the word
> may come directly from a Sorothaptic *klauiios he's not speaking of
> Celtic kladios (> Lat. gladius > Cat. gladi) but of a postulated origin
> *glavius for French glaive.
>

IMHO the French word would rather reflect Celtic (Gaulish) *kladiwo- (not **kladio-). However,  the Italoid (aka Sorothaptic) protoform *k(a)lawijo- proposed by Coromines could explain the Celtic word through metathesis and reinforcement of yod (like in East Germanic): *klawijo- > *klajiwo- > *kladiwo-.

> That leaves out the question you're interested in: when does exactly the k- in Celtic
> kladios becomes the g- in the Latin Celticism gladius.
>

A direct Celtic borrowing (from e.g. Gaulish) can be excluded because we'd expect **cladivus instead of gladius. Thus we need some intermediate language where *kl- > gl- and *-w- > 0. From DGK's research, this would be Sabine.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/66658
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/Nostratic-L/message/8365

> One riddle wrapped in another, as Churchill would say.
>

Surely he knew about Matryoshka dolls. :-)