Re Re: Fw: [tied] Pferd

From: tgpedersen
Message: 49579
Date: 2007-08-21

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud" <fournet.arnaud@...>
wrote:
>
> In general,
> in the northern part of France,
> from the Loire River Northward, (to the Rhine)
> that is to say, the place where P-celt Gauls are massively attested
> (Let us put aside this "Belgian" affair for a while)
>
> you often find the name of tribes under three forms :
>
> Nominative plural : tribe's name
> Accusative singular neuter : province's name
> Ablative-locative plural : capital's name
>
> Example : Pictav-i (tribe)
> Province : pictav-u > Poitou (territory possessed by the Pictavi)
> Capital : pictav-is > Poitiers (at the Pictavi's city/market)
>
> Most modern province capitals end with -s (coming down from
> ablative-locative plural) while the province often ends with a
> vowel. (from the accusative neuter)
> Bourges versus Berry, Angers versus Anjou (etc)
>
> It is not possible to make out if this traces back to Gaulish or
> LAtin because case markers are about the same in the two languages.
> In many cases, the Roman name has been replaced by the tribe's name.
> This is why I would consider probable that this traces back to
> Gaulish :
> it tends to erase Latin influence and show the fairly strong
> survival potential of GAulish
> under Roman occupation.
>
> In some cases, in compound names, you found genitive plural :
> in that case, the tribe's name and the defined name are separated by
> -or- or -eur- (from -orum)
> this is a rare case.
> Some examples have been created when Germanic tribes began invaded
> the country so this proves a full declension system with many cases
> must have survived after the Roman Empire collapsed.
>
> I don't know who first noticed this tribe + province + capital
> structure
> It is quite commonplace knowledge.
>
> Reims with -s also fits in the mould.
> And Paris as well.
>
> As we say in French, I don't want to "make the knife spin inside the
> wound"
> Dear Torsten,
> this is one more heavy blow on this "non Celtic Belgian" hypothesis.


Come to think of it, if this name pattern distribution is
characteristic of the area of the Belgae and absent in the area of the
Celts, that would rather support the idea that the Belgae were
linguistically and/or culturally different from the Celts, or?


Torsten