From: tgpedersen
Message: 60164
Date: 2008-09-20
>ON pruðr, ODa., Da, Nw. id., OSw prudher.
> At 8:13:00 AM on Wednesday, September 17, 2008, Jonathan
> Morris wrote:
>
> [...]
>
> > I have a copy of V's book (can I have my money back?) and
> > was waiting until my time in Purgatory to read it but was
> > prompted by your query to read the entry on knife, et al.
>
> > It's so transparently bullshit that it hardly deserves
> > comment - but for the sake of due diligence:
>
> [...]
>
> > 2. On the one hand, V says the word must have passed into
> > Old French late (p441) because you don't get 'chanif' but
> > 'canif' - (which, btw shows a profound ignorance of
> > Picard, which preserves k, and you'd expect to find canif
> > if the word was coming from the Germanic) then it's
> > borrowed from Old French into Middle English and from
> > there into Old Norse, with "Old English/Old Norse
> > bilingualism in the Danelaw contributing" (p.439) (sic).
> > So it's unlikely to get to England before 1066,
>
> To be fair, there are a few OE words borrowed from OFr
> before the Conquest; <prut> ~ <prud> 'proud' comes to mind.
> But there certainly aren't very many.
> > years after the end of the Danelaw, but then goes straightErh, out of curiousity, why?
> > into Old Norse and Icelandic. Can anyone take this
> > seriously?
>
> Not I. It's clear that by this point V. has succumbed to
> the Brain Eater.
>
> [...]
>
> > --- Em ter, 16/9/08, tgpedersen <tgpedersen@...>
> > escreveu:
>
> [...]
>
> > Unfortunately, the article is in German, but the abstract
> > isn'r:
>
> > 'Abstract
>
> > Traditionally, Engl. knife and related Germanic words -
> > Late OE cni:f, OFris. and MLG kni:f; MDu. cnijf (Du.
> > knijf), ON knÃfr - have been derived from an unattested
> > Germanic verbal root *knib- or, violating the sound laws
> > and disregarding the semantic discrepancy, from the
> > Germanic root *kni:p- 'to nip, pinch, squeeze'. The word
> > is most commonly assumed to have originated in Old Norse
> > and to have boon borrowed from there into Late Old English
> > and the other Germanic languages, then from Old English
> > into Old French as quenif, quanif 'pocket knife'; a
> > diminutive cnivet, canivet formed in Old French is assumed
> > to have traveled on into Provençal, Catalan, and other
> > Romance languages (e.g. OSpan. cañivete 'small knife'),
> > and finally into Basque as gaiñibeta, ganabeta, ganibet,
> > kanibet, etc. '(pocket) knife, penknife' with different
> > forms and meanings in the dialects.
>
> > Ten reasons are given why this assumed itinary is wrong,
> > among them the facts (1) that in the Middle Ages new
> > cultural objects and their names do not travel from north
> > to south but from south to north,
>
> For obvious historical reasons the prevailing direction is
> certainly south to north, but nothing makes this an
> unbreakable rule.
>
> <Cingler> 'to set sail', from ON <sigla> 'to sail'; <hauban>
> 'ropes supporting the mast', from ON <höfuðbendur>, plur. of
> <höfuðbenda> 'mainstay'; <hune> 'platform resting on a
> mast', from ON <húnn> 'the knob at the top of the masthead';
> <ris> 'a reef (of sails)' (<prendre un ris> 'to reef
> sails'), probably from ON <rif> 'a reef in a sail'. And
> while it isn't quite a cultural object, there's <vague> 'a
> wave', from ON <vágr> 'wave, sea'.
>
> Moreover, if there was indeed a PGmc. *kni:Baz 'knife', it's
> likely that OFr got the word from Frankish, hardly an
> unfamiliar occurrence; a further spread into the Iberian
> Romance dialects is also hardly surprising.
>
> > (2) that the implied development of a monosyllabic simplex
> > (kni:fr, knife) into an apparent compound of three or four
> > syllables (gaiñibeta, ganibet), though not impossible, is
> > at least peculiar,
>
> Not when (1) OFr isn't very happy with /kn-/, and (2) the
> <-et> is easily justified as an OFr addition. (Indeed, the
> fact that the OFr word *does* occasionally appear as
> <cnivet> points strongly to a borrowing from some Gmc.
> dialect.)
>
> > (3) that the presumed diminutive suffix -et of OFr.
> > cnivet, canivet is also found in Germanic (West Fris.
> > knyft '(large) pocket knife)', and
>
> In one variety undoubtedly of relatively late attestation.
> It really doesn't matter whether the <t> is epenthetic or
> whether the word is influenced by or borrowed from
> <c(a)nivet>: there's no reason to give it more weight than
> the rest of the Gmc. forms combined.
>
> I see that Torsten's now posted V.'s full discussion:
>
> 60. Epenthetisches -t ist denkbar, aber nicht naheliegend;
> die Annahme einer Entlehnung von canivet mit Synkope der
> unakzentuierten Erstsilbe +knivet), Initialakzentuierung
> der verbleibenden Form nach germanischem Muster (+knivét)
> und Synkope der nunmehrigen Zweitsilbe mit regressiver
> Stimmtonassimilation ergibt westfries. knyft [knift] ohne
> Zusatzannahmen.
>
> The last two words are highly amusing.
>
> > (4) that the entire set of words is left unexplained
> > because the traditional Germanic etymologies are
> > unacceptable.
>
> If those are the best four, the other six hardly matter. A
> wildly unlikely explanation (to put it kindly) is to be
> preferred to none at all (even if that were the case)? Von
> wegen!
> But I can see why Torsten likes him.