Re: Absolute, not relative directionality

> <ibar> is one of a group of words in Basque ending in <-ar>

(plural?)

> that has puzzled linguists. One of them Miguel mentioned was
> <(h)ondar> "beach; sand, remains". Basque has also <ondo> "side,
> bottom> which is also used as a postposition in that sense.

Consensus

> says this is a loan from Latin <fundu-> "bottom", but suppose
> <ondo>/<ondar> is a pair (a beach is also a side, namely a sea-

one).

>
>
> If this is so, <ondo> has relatives in IE and Semitic
>
> http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/md.html
>
> With a suffix -r (= Basque allative <-ar>?; Basque locative and
> directional postpositions are nouns which are inflected in locative
> and allative, with the noun they govern in the genitive) you get *n-
> dh-r- > Latin <infer->, Germanic <under> (etc).
>

I was sad to have split Basque <ondo> from Latin <fundu-> and thought
of a way to reunite them.

Dutch has adverbs of place constructed out of <bi> 'at' + directional
adverb with an old locativic <-ana> suffix, eg. <beneden> 'below',
<benorden> 'north of', <boven> (<bi> + *<oven>) 'above'. German still
has <binnen>. Cf English <butan> > <but>. But Dutch has no
**<beunden>.

So I thought:

<bhi> + <ondo> > Latin <fundu->. If this is true, it has odd
consequences for the early history of Latin. <fundu-> doesn't quite
match the Germanic forms <bodem>, <bottom>, <botten> etc. A local
mistake, made several times over, some places in Northwestern Europe
of a Basque? AfroAsiatic? word. <bhi> has reflexes in IE and
(Møller's) Semitic and I suspect it to be related to that *ap- 'water'
word (in case someone hadn't noticed).

> Other loose thoughts:
>
> The Old European river suffix -ant- may be related.
>
>
> Postpositions become preverbs (in an -OV language) by the process
>
> N + postp. + verb >
>
> N + preverb + verb
>

which, if the postp. was once a noun in the locative (*-su?), might
explain also the s-mobile.

Torsten