Re: Vaskonisches

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
wrote:

>
>
>
> Some time back I proposed that a Vasconic substrate might be
> responsible for the ubiquitous West European (Portuguese, Spanish,
> Basque, Italian, Dutch, Northwest German and Danish) 'locativic'

("I

> am at <verbal noun>) construction to express progressive tense:
> Basque uses a future participle (perfective participle + -en in

some

> dialects, do. + -ko in others); I proposed that some Vasconic
> substrate of Western Germanic (and Danish?) might have an

imperfective

> participle (= perfective participle the final -i or -tu, = the

verb

> radical), to which was added both -en and -ko for good measure:
>
> -en + -ko > PGerm. *-inga.
> Voilà, the Germanic verbal noun, later English gerund.
>
> I was therefore pleased to read that Trask: "History of Non-finite
> verb-forms in Basque" proposes that exactly such a participle =

the

> verb radical once existed in Basque.
>
> Another thing: -en is also the genitive suffix in Basque.

Therefore a

> putative *-en-ko could also be suffixed to nouns. PGerm. -inga can

be

> suffixed to nouns too.
>

Add the locative suffix -an, and we get *-en-ko-an > *-ingen.
Thus '<N>-ingen' is "in N's place".

Vennemann claims a derivation from Basque 'bide' (combining form
'-pide') "road" in various Central European place names, (see

http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/pd.html
)
among them 'Peiting' and 'Bidingen' (old 'Pidingen'), but must
settle for the suffix being Germanic, which doesn't seem to be
necessary: "in the place of the road".

Something similar can be found in North Germany and Holland (here
from Kuhn):

*Pedese >
Pedeze >
Päse name of town north of Peine
Pedze, Pedese, Peedse >
Peise id. in Drente, The Netherlands
*Petese >
Petse, Petesse >
Pätsen local pronounciation
Petzen name of town near Bückeburg
Petze id. south of Hildesheim
perhaps
Pötzen id. near Hameln

Because of P-, these can't be Germanic, nor Celtic. But cf.

bidaso "river" Basque
[cf. 'itsaso' "sea", 'ibaiso' "river"]

and

Bidasoa river on the French-Spanish border
Biduze another river in the Basque country

Far-fetched etymology, perhaps, but there's no Germanic nor Celtic
alternative to it.

Torsten