Re: The oddness of Gaelic words in p-

From: tgpedersen
Message: 59271
Date: 2008-06-17

> > > _The Bronze Tables of Iguvium_ [1959], p. 244.
> > >
> > > dei . crabouie . persei . tuer . perscler . uaseto . est .
> > > pesetomest . peretomest / frosetomest . daetomest . tuer .
> > > perscler . uirseto . auirseto . uas . est . di . grabouie .
> > > persei . mersei . esu . bue / peracrei . pihaclu . pihafei
> > >
> > > 'Jupiter Grabovius, if in thy sacrifice there hath been any
> > > omission, any sin, any transgression, any damage, any
> > > delinquency, if in thy sacrifice there be any seen or unseen
> > > fault, Jupiter Grabovius, if it be right, with this perfect ox
> > > as a propitiatory offering may purification be made.'
> >
> > BTW Buck calls 'tuer perscler' a genitive, can that be true?
>
> Yes. This appears to be a partitive genitive, whose scope in
> Umbrian was considerably extended. Buck (p. 195 in the 1928
> edition) calls two other examples "bolder than anything in Latin":

...
That was nice to know, but the thing that puzzled me was two -r
suffixes in an expression which is translated as a locative. Is there
any connection to Germanic locative -r in demonstratives etc?

> > > In this passage <s> is routinely written for <ç>, denoting the
> > > sibilant resulting from earlier /k/ before a front vowel (note
> > > <uaçetom> VIa:37, and in the older alphabet <vaçetum-i> Ib:8).
> > > Geminates are seldom written as such in the Tables. Von Planta
> > > thus regarded <pesetom> as written for *peççetom, assuming that
> > > inherited -kk- corresponding to L. <pecca:re> was entirely
> > > assibilated to -çç-. The other possibility is that *peçetom
> > > never had a geminate, and comes from a root *pek-. Either way,
> > > if we maintain a connection between <pesetom> and <pecca:tum>,
> > > we must abandon hope of derivation from *ped(i)ka:- 'to
> > > stumble', the assumed derivative of *ped- 'foot'. In Umbrian
> > > such a derivative, if inherited without syncope, would have
> > > yielded *per^ka:-, with /r^/ represented in the newer alphabet
> > > by <rs> (cf. U. <per^i>, <persi> 'with the foot').
> > > Had *pedka:- been current when intervocalic -d- shifted to -r^-,
> > > it would also have produced *per^ka:- by analogy with forms like
> > > <per^i>, as we see with the many examples of the prefix <ar^->,
> > > <ars-> (L. <ad->) in preconsonantal position, e.g. <ar^kani>
> > > 'musical accompaniment' (acc. sg. from *ad-kaniom).

But that analogy rests on the assumption that *ad- in *adC- was
recognized as the same prefix as *ar^- in *ar^V-. You can't guarantee
that the presumed *ped- in *ped-ka:- would be equated with per^-
elsewhere, standing before a suffix *-ka:, not a full word, as you'd
expect the per^- forms to be.

...
> > > W. Meyer-Lübke, _Wiener Studien_ 25:105ff., observed that
> > > Spanish has not only reflexes of L. <pecca:re> etc. with the
> > > expected moral meanings, but also <peca> 'freckle, speck, spot'
> > > and <pecoso> 'freckled'; he also provided a gloss "pecosus
> > > graece leprosus".
> > > Thus he argued in effect that <pecca:re> is a denominative to
> > > *pecca 'mark, spot, blemish, macula'. A. Walde, LEW s.v.
> > > <pecco:>, rejected this idea on the grounds that L. <pecca:re>
> > > is intransitive, <macula:re> transitive, and so an original
> > > intr. sense of <pecca:re>, such as 'stumble' from *ped(i)-ka:-,
> > > should be sought. However, Walde's criticism can be easily
> > > sidestepped. Assuming *pecca 'mark, spot, blemish' in
> > > pre-classical Latin, we derive a regular transitive denominative
> > > *pecca:re 'to mark, spot, blemish', and regular deverbative
> > > nouns <pecca:tus> 'act of blemishing; blemish; fault' and
> > > <pecca:tum> 'result of blemishing; blemish; bad mark; sin'. If
> > > *pecca and *pecca:re were replaced by <macula> and <macula:re>
> > > in Roman Latin, say around 200 BCE, surviving only in provincial
> > > Hispanic Latin, the derived nouns could have been reinterpreted
> > > in classical Latin as deverbatives to <pecca:re> 'to commit a
> > > fault, go wrong, sin'.
> > >
> > > Combining all the evidence from Latin, Umbrian, and Spanish, it
> > > seems best to regard L. <pecca:re> as indirectly based on a noun
> > > *pecca 'mark, spot, blemish' unconnected with *ped- 'foot'. A
> > > better source for this noun is *pek^- 'to set in order;
> > > decorate, make pretty; make pleasant, joyful' which we find in
> > > English <fair> (OE <fæger>, PGmc *fagraz, PIE *pok^rós),
> > > Lithuanian <púos^iu> (*po:k^ejo:) 'I decorate', Middle Irish
> > > <a:il> (*po:k^li-) 'pleasant', etc. Most Italic words in
> > > -ko/ka:- use /i/ as a connecting vowel, but a few have the
> > > suffix attached directly to a consonant, like L. <juvenca>
> > > 'heifer', U. acc. sg. <iveka>, <iuenga> 'id.', and some
> > > ethnonyms, U. <Naharkum> 'Narcan', <Turskum> 'Tuscan'. If it
> > > belongs here, *pecca could represent a *pek^-ka: 'beauty mark;
> > > freckle', acquiring a derogatory sense 'bad mark; blemish;
> > > fault' in the specialized language of Italic ritual,
> > > but preserved as Sp. <peca> in practically its original sense.

Why the de-gemination? And why not connect it directly to NWB *paik- etc
http://www.angelfire.com/rant/tgpedersen/KuhnText/01paik-betr_gen.html
?


...

> > > > There's the *-k-. Note that mancus, like manus, with its /a/
> > > > must be a 'mot populaire'. So would then peccatus etc.
>
> I don't know how seriously this "mot populaire" business can be
> taken as a grab-bag for words with /a/-vocalism.

It's a label and E.-M. is pretty consistent about it. The interesting
part is whether they represent loans from another language.

> Are we to suppose that the PIE upper crust spoke a refined literary
> standard, carefully minding their /e/'s and /o/'s, while the
> ham-tongued huddled masses could only grunt out /a/'s?

PPIE *a > PIE *e/o/zero according to theories by Møller and in this
group by Glen Gordon and Miguel, IIRC. The PIE ablaut vowel has to
come from somewhere; *a is the most convenient place in the vowely
neighborhood, accordingly all words with PIE *a (apart from those from
schwa secundum) are foreign or external to the language. Piotr tries
to avoid that by sticking an extra vowel into a PPIE *i *a *u system.
I don't think that holds. PIE had i-, u- and thematic stems, that
would be PPIE i-, u-, and a-stems, which would make sense.
English has done something similar to its *a, it's now partly *e,
partly *o (approx.); something similar has happened in Danish although
(approx. *ä a), with the added refinement that the further apart they
are, the more working class Copenhagen it is. So you got it the wrong
way round ;-).
Yes, I think those IE languages which arrived earliest in Europe
probably retained *a where all the later ones (except IIr.) had
*e/o/zero. IIr. might be from a mix of a lower class a-language with a
higher-class one with *e/o/zero; the latter one to explain the
secondary palatalizations. A mix, I think, is a better explanation,
*a > *e/o/zero > *a is too weird.



...

> > For semantic reasons, I suspect the whole mess of *bak- "staff",
> > *pek- "mark", *pak- "pole, construct, area", *mak- "spot, blemish"
> > to be ultimately related (*p- > *b- > *m- happened in Basque). The
> > fact that the suffix of *peþ-k- or *pex-k- (or from
> > *paþ-k-/pax-k-, > Venetic(?) *paik- "deceive" in the Kuhn quote?)
> > is of the form *-k-, not *-Vk- sets them apart, which speaks for
> > loan status (I suspect stops in PIE were spirantized before other
> > stops, cf Sabellan, Iranian and Germanic; Germanic generalized
> > it).
>
> I don't see how one original root could appear three or four
> different ways, unless we are dealing with musical instruments,
> 'guitar', 'mandolin', and the like, with names getting borrowed back
> and forth all over the place.

I think that *bak- thing must have been something pretty special.
You might enter into the world of my delusions here:
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/48817
The Basques had no reason to borrow a word for an ordinary stick from
the Romans, it is more likely 'herabgesunkenes Kulturgut'.

> Here we are dealing with common words for common notions, not exotic
> instruments.

I disagree. Common words don't need borrowing in intact societies.


> Sanskrit and Gaulish both seem to have added the *-ko- suffix
> directly to stems; in Latin -ico- has been generalized, but the -i-
> originally belonged to /i/-stems. If PIE had no double stops, you
> need some mechanism to create all the examples in Latin and Greek.
> I prefer to think (very provisionally) that NWB produced geminates
> by regressive assimilation of inherited double stops. That could
> explain *pitt- 'fruit pit' from *(s)pikto- 'pecked away'(?), cf. G.
> <Specht> 'woodpecker', and a few others,

The Svea dialects (around Stockholm) geminated spontaneously, unlike
the Göta ones (around Göteborg). Swedish mixed them up, as a result we
have:
Sw. mosse Da. mose "bog", but
Sw. påse, Da. pose "bag"


> perhaps even your Chatti as *kagh-to:s 'those joined together,
> federated', cf. L. <cohum> 'strap joining yoke to harness', Gaul.
> <caio> 'rampart, retaining wall'. But of course all NWB etymologies
> are highly speculative, rainy-day stuff.

I mostly tend to believe in some connection with the *kant- "edge,
division" words.


> Another possibility is that Italic *pekka: was originally a
> hypocoristic, 'dear little spot', formed regularly on a longer
> derivative of *pek^-, and there was no pre-Italic *pek^-ka:.

Possible, but I still think there are so few words in Latin with *-k-
suffix, that they should be suspected of other origin.

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/48943
This is supposed to explain my view of spirantization of stops before
stops. THe idea is that in such a 'low' word, scraps of earlier stages
would be sucked up by later arriving languages.


Torsten