Re: Comparative Notes on Hurro-Urartian, Northern Caucasian and Indo

On 2008-09-26 22:25, Brian M. Scott wrote:

> The word in question isn't <booth>; it's the OE word
> underlying the second element of such place-names as
> <Harbottle>, <Newbottle>, etc. The usual citation form is
> <botl> 'a dwelling, habitation, building'. I'm not aware of
> any <ð> or <þ> variants of this word, but given the
> cognates, including ON <ból>, it can only be from *boþla-.

It has the West Mercian variant <bold> (the metathesis is characteristic
of that dialect), appearing also in poetry (including Beowulf) alongside
WS botl. I mentioned this variation recently when discussing the
development of *-lþ- in OE. All such cases of -tl- ~ -ld- (~ general
Anglian -þl-) go back to *-þl-, so botl ~ bold < *boþla- < *buþla- is
seciure even in the light of internal English data.

Piotr