Re: Gemination in Celtic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "fournet.arnaud"
<fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:

>
> There's a _maquer_ 'to break hemp(?)', next to OFr.
> _macher_ 'squeeze, press'. Are these the words you are thinking of?
> The form without palatalization must be from Norman or Picard.
>
> macher is attested without -s- early on, so it must be
> from "*makka:re". A cognate is found in Breton mac'hañ 'oppresser',
> which may have been borrowed early from Gallo-Romance. There are
> apparently also cognates in other Romance languages.
>
> Anders
>
> ==============
>
> In my own native dialect,
> the word *mak- is "to eat"
> j-mak- "I eat".
>
> This is what I'm refering to
> and you confirm that this *makk-
> cannot be from *masticare.

Well, this Romance *makka:re does not mean 'chew' or 'eat' does it,
but rather 'to crush, break, squeeze' (or the like), so the
connection with your *smag- 'taste' is not really that convincing, is
it?

A modern mak-, on the other hand, is probably regular from both
*mastica:re and *makka:re, if via a dialect that doesn't palatalize
k+a. (Though I'm not 100% sure about this - maybe intervocalic
lenition precedes syncope in these dialects, I can't remember)

>
> So we can now compare it
> to *smag "taste, have taste"

Positing a Celtic word solely on the basis on a modern French dialect
word (your mak-) does not seem particularly convincing (especially as
there are good etymological alternatives). Is there any additional
evidence to back up its celticity?

Did you consider a borrowing from a Germanic language? (E.g MLG
smaken 'to taste').

Anders