Re: Scientist's etymology vs. scientific etymology

--- tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

...

>
> Here are the relevant lines on this phenomemnon in
> Basque from Trask;
> The History of Basque, pp. 129-130
>
> 'In native words, of course, the reinterpretation
> left only voiced
> plosives in initial position. Hence we find plenty
> of ancient native
> words throughout the country with forms like bizi
> 'alive',

Could bizi be from Celtic or some W IE language?

>bum 'head',
> gogo 'soul' and gatz 'salt', but practically no
> non-loan words with
> initial voiceless plosives except those of more
> recent origin and
> mostly severely localized distribution (initial d-
> is not found in
> native words, of course, except in finite
> verb-forms, in which the
> prefix d- is common; see Chapter 4).

There is a Basque surname Deusto --where is that from?
If bide < *pide, could it be related to English path?
Yes, I know, the vowels are all wrong, but if it were
from some W IE language???

>Early loans
> from Latin and
> Romance show the same pattern, reflecting the fact
> that Pre-Basque had
> only its single series of lenis plosives to render
> both voiced and
> voiceless plosives in the lending language: hence
> bake 'peace' (< pace),
> bike 'pitch' (< pice),
> Bortu(ak) 'the Pyrenees' (< portu),
> berna 'calf, leg' (< perna),
> bekatu 'sin' (< peccatu),
> barkatu 'forgive' (< parcere),
> bazkatu 'feed' (< pascere),
> dorre 'tower' (< turre or Spanish torre),
> denbora 'time' (< témpora),
> gela 'chamber, room' (< cella),
> gauza 'thing' (< causa),
> gerezi 'cherry' (< ceresea),
> garden 'clear' (of liquids) (< cardinu 'bluish'),
> ganbara 'room' (< camera),
> gertu 'certain; prepared' (< certu),
> gorputz 'body' (< corpus);
> balea 'whale' (< ballaena),
> bedeinkatu 'bless' (< benedicere),
> done 'saint' (< domine),
> dim 'money' (Z diharü) (< denariu),
> R Aezk dekuma 'tithe' (< *decuma),
> damu 'regret' (< damnu),
> B domeka 'Sunday' (< (dies) dominica),
> garau 'grain' (< granu),
> gura 'desire' (< gula),
> gisu 'plaster' (< gypsu).
> In a number of cases, however, we find an initial
> voiceless plosive
> either as a regional variant or as the most usual
> form. Thus, for bake
> 'peace' (< pace) some areas have pake; beside common
> gorputz 'body', Z
> and R have khorpitz and korpiz, respectively; next
> to bike 'pitch' (<
> pice), pike is about equally common; titare ~ litara
> 'thimble' is
> perhaps more widespread than ditare (< digitale);
> katea ~ katiña
> 'chain' (< catena) is much more usual than gate(a);
> katu 'cat' (<
> cattu) is likewise more widespread than gatu; and
> kaiku 'wooden bowl'
> (< caucu 'drinking vessel') is the only attested
> form of this word.
> There are two reasons for this. First, Basque shows
> a sporadic but
> notable tendency to devoice the initial plosive if
> the following
> syllable contains a voiceless plosive (this
> observation would apply to
> all five of the examples just cited). Note that the
> native words bihi
> 'grain', behi 'cow'

I get the feeling behi is from some W IE language

>and gurdi 'cart' are nowhere
> attested with
> voiceless plosives,

I'm sure gurdi is somehow related to Celtic kar-, if
not from Gaulish or Celtiberian, then from some W IE
language *Krr-; /rr/ > /rd/ is very common in Iberia

>while their compounds bikain
> 'excellent' (<
> *bihi-gain), bekorotz 'cow dung' (< *behi-korotz)
> and gurpil
> 'cartwheel' (< *gurdi-bil) are attested in places as
> pikain, pekorotz
> and kurpil, showing exactly such voicing
> assimilation. Second, the
> continuing influence of the neighbouring Romance
> languages, all of
> which generally retain the initial voiceless
> plosives of Latin, may
> have induced bilingual speakers to re-form the
> Basque words accordingly.'
>

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