From: Rick McCallister
Message: 57196
Date: 2008-04-13
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen"There is supposed a Nubian form qadis (vel sim) but it
> <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
>