Re: [tied] Foot/below

On Fri, 02 Jul 2004 09:42:46 +0000, tgpedersen
<tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>from Löpelmann's dictionary of the Basque in France
>
> pede: abl. "(at the) foot" Latin
> pé "foot, foundation, base" Galician,
> Portuguese
> pé de "beside" Galician
> ao pé da lettra "literally" Portuguese
> be- pref. "(going) inside or below" Basque
> pe "underside, ground floor,
> the ground" Basque
> -be, -bi,
> -pe, -pia suff. "under" Basque
> -pean, -pian
> (inessive of pe) "under" (after indef. nouns
> or poss. gen.) Basque
> pera adlative "going under, towards" Basque
> petik "from below, hidden,
> going below and through" Basque
> peka adv. "below, uner the ground, hidden" Basque
> peko "lower, subordinate,
> lower in rank" Basque
>
>
>Löpelmann thinks Basque borrowed the root from Latin or Romance,
>which it then turned into pre- and suffixes. The free word <pe> might
>as well have been "reconstituted" from the suffix (-pe), as Miguel
>proposed for <tegi> "shed".

In most dialects, the word is <behe> (<bee>, <be>), and the
reduction to -pe (< -bhe < -behe), besides -be, occurred in
suffixal position only. It's indeed possible that the
independent word pe (AN, R, Z) was backformed after the
suffixal form.
In any case, the word did not originally start with *p-, but
with b-, and a derivation from Latin/Romance pedem/*pEde is
impossible (that would have given Basque *bede, not behe).
The reduction to -pe in suffixal position also speaks for an
ancient (pre-Roman) root in the language because such
reductions generally affect only native words, and because
the reduction *-b(h)- > -p- is more ancient than the
reduction *-b(h)- > -f-.


=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...