Re: The oddness of Gaelic words in p-

At 4:40:57 AM on Saturday, May 31, 2008, tgpedersen wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "mkelkar2003" <swatimkelkar@...> wrote:

> http://dnghu.org/Indo-European-Languages/viewforum.php?f=13&sid=5a341258abb3261b7aae1ad952c54a0d

> Thank you, MKelkar. Because, in it, I find MacBain's An
> Etymological Dictionary of the Gaelic Language, with 2
> pages worth of words in p-

You found it before, and we went through this just under a
year ago. It appears that you'd still rather rely on
uninformed impressions and a very dated work than do any
serious investigation.

> http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2/mb28.html#MB.P
> http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2/mb29.html
> http://www.ceantar.org/Dicts/MB2/mb30.html
> which is odd, since Gaelic is a q-Celtic language.

> Some of the frequent explanations from Latin are
> undoubtedly correct, but you're struck by the tortuousness
> of some of the derivations,

No, *you* are.

> both the semantic and the morphological ones ('formed
> from', indeed),

Your incredulity is misplaced. 'Formed from X' appears to
be MacBain's abbreviation for 'adapted from X to
Irish/Gaelic phonology', or at least to include that sense.
An example is the entry for <pàisd> 'a child':

Irish páisde; formed from Middle English páge, boy,
Scottish page, boy, now English page.

In fact Middle English or Anglo-Norman <page>, /pa:dZ&/ or
the like, was borrowed into Irish as <páitse>, representing
something like /pa:t^s^&/. Modern <páiste> 'a child' and
Sc.Gael. <pàisde> ~ <pàiste> have metathesized the cluster.

Derivation of EIr <páb(h)áil> 'pavement' (whence <páil>) and
<páb(h)álta> 'paved' from English <pave> isn't quite so
clearcut, but it is in fact quite plausible, and if you
don't know why, you're not in a position to be skeptical.

Brian