Rob wrote:
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
>
>>>> The goose is a proven import article too.
>>>
>>> What's the proof?
>>>
>>
>> There was a discussion of its origin a long time back. I was fairly
>> certain that it turned out to be a late import, but maybe I'm now
>> confusing it with the duck? I was going to refer you to L.V.Hayes'
>> Austric page, but it seems to be gone.
>> Then there's the missing *gh- in Latin 'anser', -t in OE gant "male
>> goose" etc.
>
> The Latin word was sometimes (and archaically) written 'hanser',
> showing the regular development of *gh > h. However, /h/ had
> apparently been lost by Republican times.
>
> - Rob
There seems to be an accordance between Italicist that rural vocabulary in
Latin is taken from dialects and shows unexpected development. See:
- anser instead of the expected hanser,
- anas, anatis 'duck' with -a- in an internal syllable (where it had not the
right to be present according to phonetic rules) - this word is not a
borrowing as it has numerous cognates, see Pokorny, p. 41 or:
http://ehl.santafe.edu/cgi-bin/response.cgi?root=config&morpho=0&basename=%2Fdata%2Fie%2Fpokorny&first=1&text_root=an%C7%9Dt-&method_root=substring&text_meaning=&method_meaning=substring&text_ger_mean=&method_ger_mean=substring&text_grammar=&method_grammar=substring&text_comments=&method_comments=substring&text_derivative=&method_derivative=substring&text_material=&method_material=substring&text_ref=&method_ref=substring&text_seealso=&method_seealso=substring&text_pages=&method_pages=substring&text_any=&method_any=substring&sort=root,
- bo:s 'cow' with b- instead of expected *v- < *gW-,
- se:cale 'rye' with internal -a-,
- canis 'dog' with strange [ka] instead of the expected [ku] (cf. Greek
kuo:n etc.; influence of canere?),
- lupus 'wolf' with -p- on the place of *kW plus no trace of initial *w-,
- vulpe:s and vulpe:x 'fox' (arch. volpe:s, gen. volpis, see below),
- aper 'boar' (see below),
- asinus 'ass, donkey' (even if it is a Semitic (possibly Phoenician)
borrowing, the -s- (< -th-) should have yielded -r-),
etc.
Not all of these instances are dialectisms because some of them changed
irregularily everywhere: Latin vulpe:s < *wl.pei-, Slavic lisU < *leipso-,
Lith. lape. < *lopeH1, Latt. lapsa < *lops-, Greek alo:pe:ks, gen. alo:pekos
< *H2loH3pek- (cf. with Modern Greek alepou!), Sanskrit lopa:ka ~ lopa:ça
'jackal' < *loupeHko- ~ *loupeHk^o-, and Goth. fauho:, English fox and faws
< *puk-(s)- - the all may have developed from one protoform, but there is
virtually no way to reconstruct it.
A similar instance is Lat. aper but also Greek kápros, Slavic veprI <
*wepri-, Old English eofor < *ebura- and OE ba:r, Dutch beer, possibly from
the same source (as with no cognates); this word looks like a Semitism:
Akadian appa:ru 'wild boar' but Greek k- and Slavic v- remains unexplained.
So, Lat. anser without h- and OE gant without -s- proove virtually nothing.
*g^haH2ns- may be not a borrowing but a part of the Nostratic heritage, see
http://ehl.santafe.edu/cgi-bin/etymology.cgi?single=1&basename=/data/ie/piet&text_number=+259&root=config
In fact, the Nostratic etymology does _not_ say "no" to a laryngeal in this
word (*xns could explain nc' ~ c' in Uralic, also not sure if ns > s is
regular in Altaic; what a pity that there is no Uralic etymologies in the
EoHL databases). Indeed, the root *g^haH2ns seems to bee to long but it may
be a compound ('water bird' implies some semantic complexity). There is no
need to suppose that PIE-ans had to loan this word: they had to know wild
geese perfectly.
Grzegorz J.
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