Re: Origin of *marko- Margus murg ma'rgas amurg

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

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alexandru_mg3" <alexandru_mg3@>
> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "alexandru_mg3" <alexandru_mg3@>
> >
> > III. On the other hand I agree with Piotr that *marxa 'horse' and
> > marco- (if 'horse' - in Marcomanni) cannot be one and the same
> > word...and I never said this (despite Piotr's assumption(s))
> >
> > => but this doesn't mean that is impossible that both were
> > loaned from 'the same original word' following different loaning
> > paths on different moments of time...this is what I have said.
> >
> >
> > Marius
> >
>
> skirt and shirt, down and town, etc.
>
> And Finnish borrowings:
> kelvata, kelpa- 'be acceptable, be fit' <= Paleo-Gmc *kelba-
> helppo 'easy' <= NWGmc *helpô-
>
> lieko 'windfallen tree, waterlogged/ decayed treetrunk' <= PaleoGmc.
> *lêgô (before Grimm?)
> laho 'decayed/rotten tree(-trunk)' <= NW Gmc. *lâgô (with fricative,
> difficult to transliterate here)
>
> There is nothing wrong with the assumption of reborrowing as such.
> But it is just that the etymology is not very convincing,
> considering the whole historical and semantic context.
>

Come to think about it, Marius' proposal might even be possible.
The geminate -nn- in -manni and the connection with the anestor Mannus
means the Marcomanni were of the same kind as eg. the Chatti, ie. a
displaced NWBlock people. But that means we should not expect k -> x
-> h in the name, cf Chatti, in the first sources called Catti (and
remember that this is the mark of the NWBlock, that it had no
Grimm-shift). So in such a language we would have *marko- "horse".
That also fits with Caesar's description that the Germani used a very
new tactic of pairing men of infantry and of cavalry in pairs (he
doesn't specifically single out the Marcomanni), so "horsemen" would
make sense.


Torsten