Re: The oddness of Gaelic words in p-

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

>
> > > > _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?

No. The Gmc. -r is an adverbial formant which actually was *-r, as
seen in Lith. <kur~>, Old Lat. <quo:r>, Lat. <cu:r>. The Umbrian
gen. sg. in -r is a rhotacized -s, which appears as such in earlier
Umbrian as well as Oscan.

> > > > 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.

You do have a point. However, if the semantic development was
through 'stumble' or 'fetter' or the like, which is the popular view
that I am opposing, it is unlikely that speakers would have lost
sight of 'foot', and would have changed preconsonantal *ped- to *per^-
just as they changed *ad- to *ar^-.

> ...
> > > > 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

> ?

Degemination is regular in Spanish; cf. <boca> 'mouth', <seco> 'dry',
etc. As long as I have a halfway plausible derivation from a root
listed by Pokorny in the IEW, I have no reason to derive it from NWB;
obscurum per obscurius esset ...

> ...
>
> > > > > 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.

Some of those /a/-words are widely distributed in IE. See what E.-M.
list under <cachinno:>, which they consider a "mot expressif" (a cop-
out, like "mot populaire").

> > 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 ;-).

No, _I_ didn't; E.-M. and Chantraine and the other advocates of "mots
populaires" did.

I believe that Middle PIE /a/ remained /a/ in Late PIE _at least_ in
closed monosyllables, rather than being deflected to /e/ or /o/ or
reduced to zero, _probably_ in some other closed syllables, and
_possibly_ it was restored by analogy in certain environments almost
as soon as it was deflected or lost. That is, I do not believe that
any stage of PIE ever lacked /a/ entirely. I also do not believe
that we need to resort to wholesale borrowing to explain words
with /a/. The Latin non-denominative statives, for example, comprise
a sufficiently large, important, and coherent group that it is
incredible that they should have been borrowed from Paleo-Venetic or
whatever. Unreasonably large-scale borrowing is another cop-out.

> 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.

Sanskrit certainly has some mixing, but since short /e/ and /o/ are
absent from the phonology (with old /e/ showing itself through the
palatalizations), I see no way to escape concluding that Indo-Iranian
did indeed reduce the three-way distinction, /a/e/o/, to /a/. Lots
of weird things happen in this business.

>
> ...
>
> > > 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'.

They probably borrowed it in the specialized sense 'military staff'
(for whacking recalcitrant privates, as Clearchus did in Xenophon's
account) or the like, and semantic devaluation followed. That sort
of thing happens all the time.

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

exotic

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

I thought that was my point. If you want synchronous examples of
related words beginning with p-, b-, and m- in a non-mutating
language, you almost have to go to the realm of musical instruments.
English has <pandore>, <bandore>, and <mandolin>, and I am too tired
to dig around for other examples. English <pud>, <bud>, and <mud>
cannot be etymologically related this way.

> > 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"

I hope I can remember that example. It will probably prove useful.

> > 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.

*kant- appears to be non-IE West Mediterranean borrowed into Celtic.
If you assume loss of preconsonantal nasals in NWB, again you must
throw away *pink- 'kleiner Finger', one of Kuhn's best examples.

> > 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.

The "mot populaire" again. But all IE languages are equally old, so
why would the ones which happened to become extinct be more likely to
retain these scraps?

Douglas G. Kilday