Re: root *pVs- for cat

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

>
> At 5:21:57 AM on Sunday, July 29, 2007, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> > <BMScott@> wrote:
>
> >> At 5:14:06 AM on Thursday, July 26, 2007, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> >>> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> >>> <BMScott@> wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> >>>> Where did I say that you shouldn't make the decisions
> >>>> for yourself? The problem is that you presented your
> >>>> decisions as if they all went without saying, when in
> >>>> fact several of them were distinctly questionable --
> >>>> not necessarily wrong, but certainly questionable. This
> >>>> is *not* something that I should have to check your
> >>>> source(s) to discover.
>
> >>> The fact that you question them does not make them
> >>> questionable;
>
> >> I am hardly the only one to have done so. Were that the
> >> case, I'd be questioning your linguistic judgement
> >> instead of your intellectual honesty.
>
> > Let me see if I understand this: You assume that other
> > people have questioned my decisions;
>
> No, I *observe* that this is the case. I also observe that
> you must have been aware of the fact, assuming that you read
> the source that you cited.

Oh, that is what you meant.
You can't question someone's decisions if you're dead. As a matter of
fact you can't do much anything if you're dead. MacBain is dead.
Therefore he can't question my decisions. What is the matter with you?
You must be living in some parallel semantic universe.

> > if that is the case you will question my honesty,
> > otherwise you will question my judgement? Huh?
>
> I don't see what's so hard to understand. If you claim that
> a word is 'non-foreign', and if this claim is important to
> the case that you want to make, and if you know that others
> have argued seriously against the claim, you have an
> obligation at least to acknowledge the existence of those
> arguments.

This is the sentence you're ranting about, right?
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/49407
"
You seem to have left out a number of non-foreign pairs of items in
p-/b- in McBain:
"
Your phrase 'others have argued seriously against the claim' then
translates (yes?) into "MacBain proposes that some of these are
foreign and mentions that others have claimed that too". Right?
Now what was it you said about my personal honesty?

> Had you picked only words for which foreign sources had not
> been suggested in your source(s), I might still have
> disagreed with the claim that they (or at least some of
> them) were 'non-foreign', but in that case my disagreement
> would have been strictly linguistic, a disagreement with
> your judgements of foreignness.
>
> [...]
>
> >>> in particular because you steadfastly ignore that words in
> >>> Germanic in p- are not Germanic words and words in Latin
> >>> with root vowel -a- are (with exceptions) not Latin.
>
> >> Both are completely irrelevant to any point that I have
> >> tried to make.
>
> > Why is that,
>
> I explained in the sentence that immediately followed, still
> visible a few lines down.
>
> > and what was your point?
>
> >> An Irish borrowing from Latin or English is not evidence
> >> of Irish (or Insular Celtic) contact with some NWBlock
> >> language, irrespective of whether the word is native to
> >> Latin or Germanic, respectively.
>
> > Of course. But that was what was under discussion. Once
> > the question is settled, it's settled. What are you trying
> > to point out by repeating this truism?
>
> It's a direct response to your comment above ('in particular
> because you steadfastly ignore ...'): if you actually
> accepted this 'truism', you wouldn't have made that comment.

Why wouldn't I?

> Nor would you respond to suggested Gmc. or Latin sources of
> EIr words by wittering on about how the putative source
> can't be native in Gmc. or Latin, as if this had any
> bearing on Insular Celtic contact with some NWBlock
> language.

??? If a word exists in Latin or Germanic, but isn't native in them,
it's native in some other language. That opens a new possibility,
namely that the loan could have been made directly into Celtic from
that language.

> >>>>> From your tentative position which is not a position,
> >>>>> how would you explain the many words in p- in both p-
> >>>>> and q-Celtic? [...]
>
> >>>> The DIL has only about 20 pages of <p-> words,
>
> >>> 'Only' 20 pages, in a language which abolished p-.
>
> >> Yes, only: that's 20 out of about 2500, a very small
> >> fraction. And that same language did a lot of borrowing.
>
> > I don't get it; are you saying that if that number is
> > small enough, we can pretend they're not there? [...]
>
> No.

Well, how is your remark relevant then?

> >> Here are the headwords on the first page: P; páb(h)áil;
> >> páb(h)álta; pács; pagáil; págán; págánacht; págánda;
> >> págánta; págántacht; paidir; paidrín; paigiment;
> >> pailiris; pailis; paillium; pailliún; pailm; ?pailt;
> >> páin; paintél; paintér; páipér; paipinseóg(h); páirc.
>
> >> The article <P> is about the letter. <Pács> is a
> >> borrowing of Latin <pax>;
>
> > That's possible.
>
> It could hardly be anything else: it's 'a kiss', chiefly in
> the religious context of 'kiss of peace'.

Yes, but that is the domain of those cognates I referred to also.

> >> <páirc> is from Romance (e.g., OFr <parc>.
>
> > Unfortunately you don't provide the sense, whether it's
> > like Engl. 'park' or something closer to 'paddock' which
> > is related, in its turn related to 'pad';
>
> The DIL gloss is 'a field'; Dinneen gives 'a field, esp. a
> pasture-field, a pasture, a park'. And I'm inclined to
> accept the 2005 OED assessment of <paddock> as probably a
> variant of <parrock>, OE <pearroc, pearruc> 'fence by which
> a space is enclosed; enclosure, enclosed land', cognate with
> OHG <pfarrih, pferrih> 'a pen, enclosure, hurdle', MLG
> <perk> 'enclosure', MDu <parc, perc, paerc, parric, perric>
> 'enclosed place, park' (influenced by Fr. <parc>), and
> unrelated to <pad>.

Not true; the *-Vk suffix is very common in NWBlock words

> > 'parco' is without etymology in Latin
>
> Irrelevant. Remember that 'truism'?

Remember what I said about the donor language becoming a candidate for
a direct loan?

> >> <Páb(h)áil>, its derivative <páb(h)álta>, and <pagáil>
> >> are probably all formed on English <pave>, and
> >> <paigiment> on <pavement>.
>
> > Probably?
>
> > Here are its relatives:
> > http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/KuhnText/07pauw-treten.html
>
> I see nothing there that suggests a source other than
> English <pave> and <pavement> or their French sources.

That's your privilege. I can't make you.

> >> When I wrote 'readily identifiable', I meant exactly
> >> that: loanwords like <págán> 'a pagan, a heathen', or
> >> <páin> 'bread'.
>
> > Yes, you meant those that are, not those that aren't. At
> > 1 - 5 per page, that's 20 - 100 words in p- that can't be
> > explained traditionally,
>
> Considering that the first page had no really problematic
> words, your 1 - 5 per page seems rather optimistic.
>
> > times (approx.) 25 letters will be the number in whole
> > language. What are you going to do about them? Wait for
> > them to go away?
>
> I feel no great obligation to explain them: I don't know
> enough. And I prefer 'etymology unknown' to speculation
> unsupported by any real argument.

That's the safe option if you don't know enough and have no ambition
to change that state.


Torsten