Re: Sin once more

--- In cybalist@... s.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@ ...> wrote:

>
> --- In cybalist@... s.com, "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@ > wrote:
>
> [...]
>

> > > Celticists derive Parisii < *kwVr-- "pot", hence "the pot

> > > the kettle kin" (vel sim off the top of my head), right?
> >
> > Yes. That's because Celtic lost p-.

No, it's because P-Celts transformed /kw/ to /p/. The root I've seen is something like *kwVr-, or  something like *kwar- in Celtic and is also the root of Scots Corrie "kettle, pot".  So Celtic *kwar- > P-Celtic *par --which, I believe, is also the root of Spanish peroles "pots and pans" --usually used only in the plural in Central America, and is perceived as a hillbilly expression. I think paella is from the same root. And there's a French word for skillet (at least on the trilingual labels for skillets in the US), which I forget off the top of my head that also seems cognate.

>
> Speaking of 'pot', I believe that Kuhn, "Anlautend P-" pp. 11-12,
> erred in assigning it to a non-IE *putt-. The old forms show that
> the root is in fact *pott-. If we accept what I suggested earlier
> about NWB regularly producing geminates by regressive assimilation,
> then we can explain *potto- as the NWB reflex of the PIE participle
> *pokwto- 'cooked' (L. <coctus>), from *pekw-. Applied to vessels,
> the term would have meant 'fired in an oven', thus referring to
> pottery as opposed to metal vessels.

Another silly mistake on my part. The PIE participle or verbal
adjective 'cooked' should have had /e/-grade, *pekwto-. In Italic
and Celtic the root was assimilated to *kwekw-, and in Latin the
vowel went to /o/ by /w/-umlaut, *kwekwo: > *kwokwo: > coquo: 'I
cook', *kwekwtos > *kwok(w)tos > coctus 'cooked'. But an intervening
nasal prevented this /w/-umlaut in *kweNkwtos > *kwiNk(w)tos > qui:n
(c)tus 'fifth' (with regular [eN] > [iN] and vowel-lengthening before
[Nkt]), *kweNkwe > *kwiNkwe > qui:nque 'five' (with vowel-lengthening
after the ordinal).

Not necessarily a mistake, if you're looking at P-Celtic *kwektos- (vel sim) > **pekwto

My explanation of *potto- only works if NWB also had /w/-umlaut in
this environment which was blocked by a nasal, thus *pekwto- >
*pokwto- > *potto-, but *peNkwe 'five' > *peNk-, *piNk-, whence
Dutch/East Frisian <pink> 'fifth finger, pinky' ("Anlautend P-" p. 5).

Skeptics will scoff that I have merely stacked one ad-hoc assumption
upon another in order to force an Indo-European etymology onto 'pot'
through the Nordwestblock. Actually, what I am trying to do is
deduce the NWB soundlaws. My proposal for 'pot' is highly tentative,
as are the implied soundlaws, and may well be incorrect.

Torsten, thanks very much for referring me to your earlier posting
#48099 with the long Hubschmid citation. I have a stack of H.'s
monographs, but not "Schläuche und Fässer". H.'s work on the Alpine
dialects is excellent; when he moves away from the Alps, his
standards are not quite so high, but his work is still worth
reading. Here, his view that *pott- and *pod- (only Germanic and
Baltic, e.g. English <vat>) are related pre-IE roots is, in my
opinion, on shaky ground. He admits that he has no other examples of
a d/tt-Wechsel, and his parallel examples of a b/pp-Wechsel are
themselves rather shaky. The 'rabbit'-words may well be unrelated,
the Massiliot from Ligurian, from PIE *legw- or *lebh-, the Paleo-
Sardinian from West Mediterranean, related to Iberian *lapparo-
. "Sabine <teba> 'hill'", widely quoted, is wrong. Varro cites an
incline in the Sabine country called <Te:bae>, whose vowel is long
because Varro considers the name to be identical in origin to Greek
<Thêbai> 'Thebes' (and he might well be correct, both names then
being of East Mediterranean origin), but this has nothing to do with
Cosentino <tappa> or Abruzzese <teppa>.

For now I think I will stick with my tentative derivation of *pott-
from the Nordwestblock, from the PIE root *pekw-.

Douglas G. Kilday

. "Sabine