Re: [tied] Re: Celtic and pre-Celtic in Britannia

----- Original Message -----

From: Christopher Gwinn

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Tuesday, November 27, 2001 7:30 PM

Subject: [tied] Re: Celtic and pre-Celtic in Britannia

 

 

[Antonio:] Starting from the fact that Celtic was a /o/ language, a simple criterion 
to separate Celtic and non-Celtic toponyms could be looking for ones that have an /a/ where /o/ would be expected from Ablaut of a PIE root.

[Chris:] What evidence is there that Celtic was an "/o/" dialect? can you give
some examples? If I am not mistaken, Celtic certainly has native examples of a-grade forms of PIE roots.

 

Italic and Celtic make abundant use of *a as a zero-grade substitute and a "cluster-buster", especially next to a liquid or nasal. One has to be careful before using *a-vocalism as a "simple criterion" for identifying non-Celtic tpoponyms.

 

Piotr

 

 

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[Antonio:] 8) Tamarus fl. (Ptol., Rav.) If from *tem- 'to cut', it should be the /o/ Ablaut-variant in an /a/ language. But again we have here also Tamesa fl. (the Thames) and probably something more authored has been said on it. Who helps me ?

[Chris:] I am fairly certain that a Celtic etymology has been proposed for the Tam- names. Once again, I would recommend Xavier Delamarre's Dictionnair de la langue gauloise, as well as Kenneth Jackson's Language and History in Early Britain.

Because of Ekwall's authority the name of the Thames was once widely believed to derive from PIE *temh1(e)s- 'dark', though -- let's face it -- the Thames is not conspicuously dark, as English rivers go. It gets remarkably muddy downstream, and that fact may be of more etymological relevance. Nicolaisen and several other hydronymists connect the *tam- group of names with *ta:- < *tah2- 'dissolve, melt, flow' (*th2-mo-), the protoform of <Thames> being extended with the hydronymic suffix *-isa:.

 

Piotr