From: Mark Odegard
Message: 2028
Date: 2000-04-04
There is likely a messy dupe of this, with raw html. Egroups has downgraded their software.
What shows up in German as burg is interesting. German of course also has berg, 'mountain'. EIEC , in two separate articles, by separate authors cover the word EIEC renders as bergh.
Under the article "Fort", p. 210, Angela Della Volpe puts the Germanic reflex together with Homeric purgos, Armenian burgn, suggesting relationships with Tocharian words for 'hard' 'solid', and possible connection with Latin fortus/fortis. Old Indic brmhati, 'fortifies' is also cited. The main sense cited is 'height', 'fort'.
Douglas Q. Adams, in the article "Hill", p. 269, using the identical transcription, flatly says this is PIE for 'high', 'hill', 'mountain'. He cites where it shows up in the daughters. It's mountain in Germanic, hill in Celtic. OCS bregu and Russian bereg: 'riverbank'. Avestan and Ossetic use it for mountain or mountinous parts too.
Della Volpe ignores the mountain meaning, though both share the identical semantic space of 'high place', and since mountains are safer than plains when you are being invaded, the extension to 'safe high place' and then to 'artificial high place' and then 'fort' is obvious.
Am I missing something? I think it's the same word.
In the case of Armenian and Greek, she notes the forms are unexpected. Greek should be **parXos (and not purgos), while she says Armenian should be **barjn (and not burgn). Some inter-IE borrowing seems to be at work.
Della Volpe also mentions tantalizing parallels in non-IE languages, Syriac burga, 'tower', and Urartian burgana- 'bulwark, fortress'. Borrowings from IE? It's easier to posit a borrowing from IE in this case that to have to explain how it shows up everywhere from Germanic and Celtic to Tocharian (and possibly Italic) and by probable borrowing, to Greek and Armenian. I think she or Adams would have mentioned an Anatolian reflex if there was one.
Again. Am I missing something?
Mark.