Re: root *pVs- for cat

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <BMScott@...> wrote:

>
> At 4:40:54 PM on Sunday, July 22, 2007, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> > <BMScott@> wrote:
>
> >> At 10:18:08 AM on Friday, July 20, 2007, tgpedersen
> >> wrote:
>
> >>>>> You seem to have left out a number of non-foreign
> >>>>> pairs of items in p-/b- in McBain:
>
> >> [...]
>
> >>>>> babag "tassle" / pab "shag, refuse of flax"
>
> >>>> It's distinctly disingenuous to call this non-foreign
> >>>> when you've read the <pab> entry in McBain. <Babag> is a
> >>>> diminutive of <bab>, which may be from ME; <pab> is from
> >>>> EIr <pop(p)> 'a shoot, a tendril (of a plant), also
> >>>> <pap>, which may be from Latin.
>
> >>> This is McBain's pab-entry:
>
> [snipped]
>
> >> Precisely: McBain explicitly notes the possibility of ME,
> >> MScots, or Latin origin. (My comment on EIr <pop(p)> is
> >> based on the DIL.) Therefore it is at least disingenuous
> >> (and I would say downright dishonest) to offer <babag> and
> >> <pab> without qualification as 'non-foreign' items when
> >> citing only McBain.
>
> > The decision what was foreign and non-foreign was mine.
>
> Failure to point this out, especially when the decision is
> contentious, is ... sloppy, to put a better face on it than
> I think is actually justifiable.

Who else should decide it? Apart from from the fact that McBain
obviously doesn't endorse the 'papula' connection himself. Somehow I
get the impression you want to sidetrack the whole inconvenient issue
of the many words in p- in q-Celtic. Dineen is crawling with them.

> [...]
>
> >>> Let's first reiterate our positions:
> >>> I think the Celtic p-/b-words are borrowed from some
> >>> substrate language. You think they, if borrowed, are
> >>> borrowed from a classical language (loans in p- from
> >>> English can only be indirect, since they are foreign in
> >>> Germanic too).
>
> >> I've not taken a position;
>
> > You follow standard procedure by not considering a local,
> > non-Germanic source for Celtic words in p-; that's a
> > position.
>
> No. I have *not* taken such a position. I have tentatively
> accepted another explanation for some (probably large)
> fraction of the Sc.Gael. instances, but otherwise I have
> merely explained why much of the evidence that you've
> offered ranges from weak to nearly worthless.

From your tentative position which is not a position, how would you
explain the many words in p- in both p- and q-Celtic? And why do the
p-variants of the p-/b-words appear in Irish?


Torsten