--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alex" wrote (quoting only the part
which doesn't put into limelight a solid argument against one of his
own "work hypotheses"):
> Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
>
>> I'm unable to follow your "logic". If the word had been borrowed
at
>> the time that Slavic /o/ was still /a/, it would have been Slavic
>> *gansa:ku, which would have given Rom. gânsac, precisely.
>>
>> However, it's rather more likely that the word was borrowed when
the
>> Slavic form was *g&~sak(&) (with a nasal vowel intermediate between
>> Old Slavic /o~/ and Bulgarian /&/), which would also have given
Rom.
>> gânsac.
>
> I have nothing against your argumentation since we have indeed the
form
> "gânsac" as expected. Since the nasal could come just from Germanic
and
> Slavic, one has to share between the two posibilities. More
plausible
> appears to be the Slavic one due the historical perspective.
> The problem was just with "gâsca" and "gâscan" which cannot be
Slavic.
Now, let's refresh our memory with your arguments against "gâsca" not
being a Slavic loanword in Romanian:
> The Bulgarian "g&sca" looks like a loan from Romanian, unless Slavic
> "o~" yelded "&" in Bulgarian.
This wasn't chronologically the first in #26530, but is the one
answered
by Miguel "As of course it did.", answer you failed to quote or to
take
into account. As a first consequence, your inference about Bulgarian
word
looking more like a loan from Romanian turns out to be simply false.
Let's get to your other arguments.
> neither suffix "-ka/ke" nor suffix "-ak/ek" are special Slavic;
Just look for "ploscã", "balercã", "zacuscã", "zamcã", "lotcã",
"matcã",
"japcã", "votcã", "butelcã", "rusalcã", "mahorcã", etc.. There are a
lot
of Slavic loanwords in Romanian having the structure -Ccã < -Cka
(mostly
following stress); since they form a clear majority in the category of
nouns ending in -Ccã, this is a strong indication for a Slavic origin.
Romanian suffix -cã is not diminutive (a feminine diminutive is -ucã,
still of Slavic origin) and our considered word, "gâscã", cannot be
analyzed in Romanian as "gâs + -cã" since the root has no meaning. In
Romanian, "gâscã" is just a simple noun, and "-cã" is not a suffix but
a
simple ending. On another hand, Slavic word is an analyzable
diminutive
*go~s-Uka- of a Proto-Slavic *go~sU- (Pokorny 615, you already saw the
entry), thus indicating clearly it cannot be a loanword from another
language (namely Romanian).
> there is neither an "o", nor an nasal ( except in gansac) which will
> show any doubtless Slavic tracess.
/1/ in Romanian can be realized without nasalization under stress,
before a group of consonants. There is nothing strange in derivation.
If you're still not convinced, try to put some nasalization and to
pronounce [g1~sk&] (that is the normal form, with nasal [~] not with
plain [n], like in "luncã" pronounced [lu~k&], not [lunk&]). OTOH,
you are aware that in Romanian (more frequently in Transylvania) one
can find the name "Gânscã", aren't you?!
> Remember that in Rom. the nasal is still there if it was once in
Slavic,
> thus an loan from any Slavic is excluded.
Usually, a Slavic nasal is realized as nasal (written "n") in
Romanian,
but as said, it just can disapper in that articulatory context.
Actually
nothing opposes to a loan from Proto-Slavic but the fact Romanians
didn't
met them :). Instead we know for sure that the first Slavic influences
on
Proto-Romanian have South-Slavic characteristics, so one could infer
either a loan from some South-Slavic type word (which existed beyond
any
doubt, courtesy of Serbo-Croatian and Bulgarian, cf. Polish &
Ukrainian
forms), or later, from Bulgarian. Since only Bulgarian form is
attested,
and since Aromanian doesn't have this word, the Bulgarian loan looks
like
the most probable.
> This is why I showed the "cãsca" versus "gâsca". It seems this
paralel
> is in Slavic not to find;
This paralel has no relevance. Pokorny 614 (one of the entries for
`yawn`)
is by a simple coincidence, very similar to 615 (which has a
supplementary
"s"), so there is no surprise that in languages in which the word for
`yawn` derives from this root, it looks not so different with respect
to
`goose` (if the corresponding root is preserved). In Slavic, the word
for
`yawn` is to be linked not to Pok. 614 but to another root, "*g^he:-"
(2),
Pok. 625 `gähnen, klaffen` as well. So the corresponding words do not
look
similar in Slavic because there is no reason for that.
The vague similarity from Romanian is purely coincidental (the verb
"cãsca" is to be linked to a vernacular Latin "*cas(i)ca:re",
ultimately
a derivative of "ca:sus" (`fall`), also having given birth to Italian
"cascare" (used also in `cascare dal sonno`), Sadinian "cascare",
maybe
also Catalan & Spanish "cascar" (though they prefer to see it as
deriving
from another form, "*quassica:re"). Obviously, there is no reason for
it
to be similar with the `goose` word.
> beside of this the non-satem aspect of the word is a strong
argument.
... supporting Pokorny's note between brackets: "mit wohl auf germ.
Einflus
| beruhenden g statt z", that is the evolution in Proto-Slavic has
been
influenced necessarily in order to have _all_ Slavic reflexes with
/g/,
not with /z/. Note that even if you would like to explain (against all
linguistical evidence) as Romanian loans the Polish, Ukrainian,
Serbian
and Bulgarian words, there are the other non-diminutive forms (without
-ka
but still with initial /g/) in Russian, Slovene and Polish, which
cannot
be explained through Romanian and require a Proto-Slavic form with
/g/.
And of course, if you want to infer a Dacian (North Thracian) origin
for "gâscã", then you'll have to cope with the same problem since
Dacian
was Satem as well, and one should have had an initial *z...
In conclusion, all your arguments fail and Piotr's words are
perfectly
summing up my above lines: "Au contraire, they can't be anything else
_but_ Slavic".
Marius Iacomi