Re: [tied] Re: PIE wlkWos, Italo-Celtic

C. L. Vermeers wrote:

> this is extensively discussed in Kim McCone, "OIr. _Olc, Luch-_ and IE
> _*wlkWos, *lúkWos_ 'wolf'" (Ériu vol. 36 (1985), pp.171-176), which is
> section 2 of "Varia II" in that volume.
>
> "There are no secure attestations of the IE word's survivval in Celtic
> as a normal expression for 'wolf', for which Old Irish uses _faél_
> (probably meaning 'howler' originally)[1], _cú allaid_ (literally
> 'wild dog') or _mac tíre_ (literally 'son of the land'). Nevertheless
> it has been claimed, albeit not without controversy[2], that a reflex
> of _*wlkWos_ does survive into Old Irish as _olc_ in certain personal
> names and, more doubtfully, in very common adjectival usage meaning
> 'bad, evil'. The main problem is that a derivation of _olc_ from
> _*wlkWos_ does not tally with conventional assumptions about the
> historical phonology of Irish, which lead us to expect something like
> _*flech_ from such an input." (pp.171-2)

Not if the vocalisation of */wRC-/ as *uRC- was possible in the ancestor
of Celtic, as it probably was: cf. OIr. torc (gen. tuirc), MWel. twrch
'wild boar' < PCelt. *turkos < *twr.k^os -- a neat parallel to OIr olc,
gen. uilc, if derived from *ulkWos < *wl.kWos .

Piotr