Re: path

On 2008-12-30 21:33, dgkilday57 wrote:

> One expects *pant- to be Grimm-shifted into *fanþ-, and
> loss of the nasal in western WGmc would require compensation,
> yielding *fa:þ-.

There's no such thing at the WGmc. level. The loss of the nasal is
restricted to the "North Sea" dialects, i.e. English, Frisian and Old
Saxon, yielding *a~: (> Anglo-Frisian /o:/). In German, one would expect
+<fand>. Pre-Gmc. *pant- is definitely a non-starter.

> To me it makes more sense to assume a Gaulish *bat- as the source.
> Pokorny assigns some Insular Celtic words pertaining to death, Old
> Irish <baîd> 'dies', etc., to PIE *gwa:- (i.e. *gweH2-) 'to go, come'
> on the grounds that dying is a going forward from the realm of
> mortals. In English, <pass> is used in a similar sense. This
> Insular specialization of the word was not necessarily shared with
> Gaulish. The Greek adjective <batós> '(easily) passed, passable', if
> it comes from *gwm.to- like the Latin participle <ventum>, would have
> *banto- as the expected Gaulish cognate. However, a parallel
> adjective *gwH2to- from *gweH2- not *gwem- would yield Gaul. *bato-.
> I propose that this form in the sense 'passable' was used in Gaulish,
> typically as a substantive with a noun 'way, road' understood, and
> borrowed as a noun by pre-Grimm-shift Germanic-speakers along the
> lower Rhine, where it regularly became WGmc *paþa-, and remained
> restricted to regional usage.

Interesting, and quite plausible. BTW, Matasovic' reconstructs a PCelt.
*bato- (n.) 'death' (OIr. bath) from the root you mention above. If
*gW&2-to-m developed semantically as 'passing' --> 'death', one can
easily imagine *gW&2'-to-s 'that which is passed, way, road'. I think
you've got a serious alternative for the Iranian etymology.

Piotr