--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Arnaud Fournet"
<fournet.arnaud@...> wrote:
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...>
>
> [...]
>
> 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.
>
> DGK
>
> =========
>
> What about NWB as an alternative to Celtic ?
>
> A.
>
The geographic distribution is compatible with borrowing from either
Gaulish or Nordwestblöckisch, but I have doubts about interdental
fricatives occurring in the latter. Of the 35 Germanic stems which
H. Kuhn, "Anlautend _P-_ im Germanischen", ZMaf 28:1-31 [1961]
regards as probably containing unshifted Indo-European /p-/ from
NWB, three have an interdental. These are our *paþ- 'Pfad, treten'
which he derives from PIE *ped-, *pod- 'Fuß', citing Bremisch
<pad> 'Fußsohle' and Altmärkisch <padd'n> 'Fußspuren'; *peþil-,
*peðil- 'Niederung, Moorland', supposedly extensions of *peþ-, *peð-
which he connects with Greek <pedíon> 'Ebene'; and *piþ-, *pitt-
'Mark der Pflanze' which he derives from PIE *pi- 'fett' [sic; the
root is Pokorny's *pey(H)-, IEW p. 793]; presumably his NWB stem
represents a PIE /d/-extension of the zero-grade corresponding to
the /o/-grade *poi(H)d-, Gmc. *fait- 'plump, fat' (this itself is
problematic because the laryngeal should have lengthened the stem-
vowel, PIE *piHd- > Proto-NWB *pi:d-, but Gmc. has reflexes of
short /i/, English <pith>, Dutch <pit>, etc.). While I cannot rule
out the possibility that NWB indeed reflected PIE *d (or *dy?)
as /ð/, and devoiced it to /þ/ in stem-final position, it seems less
complicated to assume pre-Grimm borrowing of Gaul. *bat- to yield
Gmc. *paþ-. Possibly *peþil- comes from a similar borrowing of a
Gaulish *betulo:n vel sim. 'birch-place', originally applied to
moist places in the northern coniferous forest; cf. P.H. Raven and
H. Curtis, _Biology of Plants_ [1970], p. 570:
"A number of genera of coniferous trees, such as spruce, hemlock,
fir, and pines (in relatively warm, dry areas) are common, with a
lesser representation of willows and birches, particularly in moist
places."
Romance reflexes require a wide variety of protoforms for 'birch' in
different Gaulish dialects, all with *bet(t)-.
Kuhn's <pad> and <padd'n> may very well be of NWB origin from PIE
*ped-, *pod-, independently of the 'path' question.
I have no explanation for *piþ-.
DGK