Re: Not "catching the wind " , or, what ARE we discussing?

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

>
> [...]
>
> Ernout-Meillet:
> 'cattus, -i: m., et catta, -ae f. (doublet gattus, gatta):
> chat, chatte.
> Attesté avec ce sens depuis Palladius (le terme ancien est fe:le:s);
> bien représenté dans les l. romanes;

Palladius has the first attestation of <cattus> 'tomcat', but <catta>
as an epicene goes back to Baruch 6:21 in the Vulgate, translating
<ailouros> of verse 21 of the Epistle of Jeremiah in the LXX (for
some reason this is appended to Baruch in the Vulgate, which has only
5 chapters in the LXX). The Latin Baruch is one of the books which
predates Jerome and was not edited by him, so its composition may go
back to 250 CE or so.

> ital. gatto,-a, esp. gato,-a; fr. chat, chatte, M.L.1770.
> Sur cattus ... quod cattat, i.e. uidet
> dans Isid.12,2, 38., v. Sofer, p.62.-
> Dans Martial, 13, 69,1, Pannonicas nobis numquam dedit Vmbria

cattas,

> le mot semble désigner un oiseau, peut-être le hoche-queue,

aílouros,

> cf. gattula "attagé:n" Orib.
> La substitution de cattus à fe:le:s doit correspondre à

l'introduction

> à Rome du chat domestique, sans doute importé d'ailleurs.

A cat named Krankru is depicted resting on a table or couch in the
tomb of the Etruscan family Leinie, ca. 300 BCE, at Sette Camini (TLE
235 = CIE 5095).

> Dérivés: cattin(e)us, tardif (= fe:li:nus);
> catto:,-as, cf. sans doute esp. catar.
> Le celtique a irl. catt, gall. cath reposent sur *kattos, qui figure
> en gaulois comme nom propre Cattos;
> l'emprunt du mot au latin, admis par M.Pedersen, est donc peu
> vraisemblable.
> Le vieux haut allemand a kazza, le v.norr. ko,ttr, le lituanien
> kâte.~, le slave kotUka. Mais ces mots peuvent provenir, comme le

mot

> latin, d'une langue inconnue. Le "chat" domestique ne s'est répandu
> que tardivement dans le monde romain; l'origine en est discutée
> (Afrique?).'
>
> So, if Celtic *kattos is unlikely to have been borrowed from Latin,
> but must come from some other language, why must Germanic *kattu- be
> borrowed from Latin? What other examples are there of a Latin

thematic

> stem being borrowed into Germanic as a u-stem (cf. the -U- in the
> Slavic word)?

With this particular word <cattus>, borrowing into early Gmc. as a u-
stem is not a problem, because many of the Latin sentences probably
involved the nom. sg., unlike words for inanimate objects. It is not
hard to imagine a Roman merchant showing off his domestic cat and
saying "hic est meus cattus; meus cattus mures captat et devorat;
meus cattus arbores noctu scandit ad aves capiendas", etc. It would
have been natural for the nom. sg. <cattus> to have been borrowed as
a u-stem. Gothic retains <handus> and the like uncontracted, if
memory serves.

The cat itself might come from Africa, but looking for the word there
is a dead end. None of the three Coptic words for 'cat', including
the one used in the Coptic version of the Epistle of Jeremiah,
resembles <catta> at all. My best guess is that Latin <catta> in
both its senses, 'certain Pannonian bird (the wagtail?)'
and 'domestic cat', is borrowed from Messapic (or related Illyro-
Japygian) *katta, a hypocoristic form of a compound whose first
element *katt- is cognate with Lat. <quassus> 'shaken', and whose
second (unidentifiable) element means 'tail' or 'rear end', the
compound meaning 'having a shaken tail' or 'shaking its tail', much
like Greek <ailouros> 'waving-tailed'. It is near my bedtime, so
details of this hypothesis will follow later.

Douglas G. Kilday