From: dgkilday57
Message: 59096
Date: 2008-06-07
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:
[rambling citation of Vennemann, blah, blah, blah ...]
> The similarity of the Basque cheese words with Latin 'ca:seus'
> "cheese" has of course been noted earlier. However an etymological
> connedtion was contested (cf. Agud/Tovar 1992: s.v. gazna, with
> references), and that is the state of affairs. The rejection is
> understandable on the basis of the prevaiing theory, according to
> which an early loan relationship between Latin and Basque could only
> have the direction from Latin to Basque: From
Latin 'ca:seus' "cheese"
> one might reach, granted, the Basque cheese words, not however their
> obvious base Basque 'gatz' "salt". It is different in the theory I
> stand for. According to that Vasconic was in prehistoric times
> substrate and adstrate to all western IE ... languages, thus also to
> Italic. In the framework of this theory the direction of loan could
> very well be the opposite; it just predicts that, that from
> prehistoric times there are Vasconic loanwords in Latin. These are,
it
> must be said, only detectable as such in the fortunate case in which
> they in spite of three thousand years of further development of both
> languages can be explained from the present Basque. Latin 'ca:seus'
> "cheese" is such a loanword.'
[end of citation]
No it is not, since intervocalic -s- was rhotacized in the 4th cent.
BCE in Latin. Like <balteus>, <clipeus>, <puteus>, and several
others, <ca:seus> probably comes from Sabine (or the "rustic" Sabino-
Latin dialect) after the rhotacism. Since Sabine was a P-Italic
language, an inherited reflex of *kwa:t(h)- (better *kweH2tH2-)
should have begun with /p/. Sabine itself probably borrowed the word
from an IE language which reduced */kw/ to /k/. Whatmough takes
Messapic <penkeos>, <penkaheh[e> as genitives of onomastic forms
derived from *penkwe 'five', like Latin <Quin(c)tius>, Oscan
<Púntiis>. Thus the IE source language could well belong to the
Illyro-Japygian group. The assibilation was probably already present
in the form which Sabine borrowed.
> I'll add Venetic, since I like that language. So, *katz "salt"
exists
> in these two (loaned from whichever to whichever; note that *-i is
> also in IE an adjective suffix, noter also the various Basque forms
in
> -zt-, metathesis in a loan?), and from Venetic its adjective *kazi
> "salty" is loaned to Latin ('ca:seus' "cheese"), West Germanic
> ('Käse', 'kaas', 'cheese') and Celtic (Irish 'cáise' "cheese") as
the
> word for salted rennet cheese.
There is already an attested language called Venetic. The one you
hypothesize (and I am not sure how it differs from Krahe's
Alteuropäisch, or Pokorny's Veneto-Illyrisch) should be called
something else to avoid confusion.
Vennemann's rambling rhetoric is about as convincing as a three-
dollar bill. In decades of riding his Euro-Vasconic hobbyhorse, he
has yet to establish anything usable. A Kling-Klang similarity
between 'cheese' and the Basque for 'salt' is etymologically
worthless.
Douglas G. Kilday