From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 18657
Date: 2003-02-09
----- Original Message -----
From: "alex_lycos" <altamix@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Sunday, February 09, 2003 8:29 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] The word for horse
> Of course you will say I have nothing in the hand to say that the word
"cal" was known before "cabalus".
> Remember please about "celer", Greek "keles" and Greek "keler" as well
as about Old Latin "celeres"= equestrian corpus. In the Eolian language "keler" meant "horseman".
<celere:s> means 'the swift' (from <celer> 'swift', not any 'horse' word). How on earth could any of these words have developed int Rom. cal??
Any word with a single *-l- would have been affected by rhotacism. On the other hand, the development of caballu- > Rom. cal is completely regular (loss of intervocalic /b/ as e.g. in <scrie>, no rhotacism because the lateral was geminated). Albanian kalë is normal too -- Albanian lost all intervocalic voiced stops early enough for the oldest loans from Latin to have been affected.
Piotr