26-06-03 09:45, g wrote:
> Thank you; I'm not sure Rum. <mare> will shine in a new
> light, but <mogilla> and <magure> seem to be precious
> hints with respect to other words: Rum. <moghila/movila>
> "heap, hillock," <mãgura> "hill, mountain, peak." Yet the
> Romanian dictionary recommends the reader to compare
> the latter word with Alb. <magullë>. Does this one belong
> to the same Alb. mog-/mag- group? (As for Rum. <movila>
> or <moghila>, acc. to the same source, < Old Sl. <mogyla>.)
The derivation of <madh> from *meg^h2- (with either an o-grade or a
secondary weak grade, *m&g^h2-) rules out any connection with <magullë>
and <mãgura>, since these show a non-Satem velar. I think a very early
Slavic loan must be assumed here, since *mogyla (phonetically
*[magu:la:] at the time of the initial Slavic expansion) is a common
Slavic word meaning 'kurgan, burial mound'; the retention of /g/ between
vowels in Albanian would be hard to explain in an inherited word without
a transparent morphological base. Romanian <moghila ~ movila> is of
course a post-rhotacism borrowing from a later Slavic source, while
Polish toponymic <Magura> (in the southern highlands) is a loan repaid
to us by Daco-Romanian immigrants.
As regards its etymology, the word *mogyla is as enigmatic as a steppe
kurgan itself. An extremely speculative (and therefore suspect) Iranian
etymology has been proposed (Sarmatian *magu-ula- 'magic hill'), from
*magHu- as in OP magus^ 'magus', Eng. <may, might>, Slavic *mog-ti 'be
able to', similar but unrelated to *meg^h2-. I have a vague recollection
of its having been discussed on Cybalist two or three years ago.
Piotr