Re: [tied] Re: Ducks and Souls

11-09-03 22:26, Piotr Gasiorowski wrote:

> McBain (not quite an up-to-date resource) quotes reconstructed
> *vannello- which is practically identical with the Proto-Romance form of
> the 'lapwing' word (the [uncertain] Classical Latin word was <parra>).
> Its vocalism seems to me to match the Goidelic forms better than the
> Brittonic ones; as to the possibility of reconciling them I'd prefer to
> hear the opinion of a Celtologist. It seems likely that the Romance word
> is a folk-etymologised borrowing from Celtic, with a change of meaning.
> Perhaps Old Irish re-borrowed its phonological form from Latin, but note
> that the Celtic meaning is stable ('swallow, martin, swift', not 'lapwing').

An afterthought: if *wenna:lo- is an acceptable PCelt. reconstruction,
it might be a derivative of *h2wet-no- from *h2wet- 'blow, fan' (a
variant of *h2weh1-?). The *h2 is supported by Greek cognates, e.g.
aetma 'flame' (< *h2wet-mn.). Calvert Watkins assigns Lat. vannus 'fan'
to the same root, unclear as the *a is.

Piotr