--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Joao S. Lopes" <josimo70@...> wrote:
>
> (just correcting my typos in last message)
> Do you know some Latin word with f-V-r/l-b ?
> Maybe B in barba came from some kind of svarabhakti, like -m bHardHa- > -m barba, instead of expected *farba.
>
> For example, f-Vm-b existed, cf. fimbria.
Old Latin <forbea> 'food' is recorded by Festus: "Forbeam antiqui omne genus cibi appellabant, quam Graeci <phorbé:n> vocant." The Latin word can hardly be borrowed from the Greek, since Old Latin simply dropped the aspiration in such borrowings, thus <Poenus>, <Pu:nicus> are extracted from Grk. <Phoînix> 'Phoenician'. Hence <forbea> is cognate with Grk. <phorbé:> 'food, forage, pasture' and <phérbo:> 'I feed, nourish, preserve'. The rarity of PIE */b/ makes *bHergW- likely as the root, in which case <forbea> must come to Latin from P-Italic, probably Sabine, aptly for a pastoral term 'forage, fodder'. Possibly the same root appears in <Borbetomagus> 'Worms' if it is Gaulish for 'Pasture Field' vel sim.; the other forms in Borm-, Gorm-, Worm- would then result from confusion with place-names having the much more common 'Warm Spring' element from *gWHer-m- in various languages. Also the Ager <Borbonensis> (now <Bourbonnais>) in central Gaul could be referred to *bHergW-, and modern <Borbén> in Pontevedra.
Another pastoral term from Sabine, <forfex> 'shear, scissor', had a native Latin equivalent *forbex which is reflected in modern Tuscan <fòrbice> 'id.', standard Italian <fòrbici> 'shears' (while modern Venetian <forfe> continues <forfex>). This is an /o/-grade agential noun of a relatively uncommon type, represented also by <vortex> 'whirlpool, eddy' from <verto:> 'I turn', <po:dex> 'buttocks' from <pe:do:> 'I fart', and Faliscan <sorex> 'weaver' from <sero:> 'I weave'. That the grade is /o/ and not zero is indicated by <po:dex>, *pozdeks from *pezdo:, since zero-grade *pzdeks would either be assimilated to *psteks and reduced to *stex, or acquire shwa secundum yielding *pazdeks > *pa:dex. Umbrian has a 3pl. pres. ind. <furfant> 'they shear' from a denominative stem *forfa:- related to <forfex>. The PIE root is evidently *bHerdH- 'to cut'.
The fact that *forbex continued in use, at least in Tuscan Latin, without becoming *borbex, makes it very unlikely that the replacement of *farba by <barba> was due to simple assimilation. Nor can extraction of <barba> from <imberbis>, <Ahe:nobarbus>, etc., which I proposed earlier, explain the situation on its own since <i:nfe:li:x>, <carnifex>, etc., if they ever had word-internal stops, restored /f/ from the simplex forms. This replacement was a special case and required special circumstances.
Now, Oscan *farfo: 'beard' is apparently continued by Abruzzese <fraffe,> 'snot', and its derivative, Osc. *farfars 'coltsfoot, Tussilago farfara' (a plant with large woolly leaves) by Tarentine <farfo> 'id.'. Latin borrowed the Sabine *farfar(o)s as <farfarus> 'coltsfoot' (the Plautine by-form <farferus> is perhaps from Umbrian *farfer), and the collective <farfaria> appears in the Latin Dioscorides. <Farfarus> is also the name of a tributary (overgrown with coltsfoot?) of the Tiber in the Sabine country, now <Farfa>, but Latinized as <Fabaris> (evidently by folk-association with <faba> 'bean'). It is likely, therefore, that Sabine *farfa: 'beard' was still in use when the Latin word became *farba:, well after the earliest association of Latins with Sabines around Rome (as shown by the name <Sabi:ni:> itself; a South Picene inscription has <Safinús> as their self-name). Simplex words containing internal -f- became associated in Roman Latin with Sabine pastoral rusticity. At some point, as we have seen, Roman Latin dropped *forbex in favor of pastoral <forfex>, and dropped <forbea> entirely, which was a genuine Sabinism, though containing -b- not -f-. Also there was no river *Farbarus, so Roman Latin *farba 'beard' was in a unique position, standing alone against rustic pastoral *farfa, with *i:nferbis 'beardless' against rustic *anfarfus. I think now that we should regard <barba> as a hyperurbanism, motivated by the difficulty which immigrants from the country, trying their darnedest not to sound like hicks, had in maintaining *farba as the urban form. Compounds like *i:nferbis against rustic *anfarfus might have been even more difficult to keep straight. The introduction of <barba> and <imberbis>, natural to neither dialect, would have seemingly eliminated the trouble. There was no mistaking <barba> for a rustic form. It was double-marked for urbanism against *farfa. Once <barba> became established in the speech of a few Romans, it probably gained ground quickly and steadily over *farba, which would have been stigmatized as either a half-assed urbanism or a hilarious hybrid, and eventually ridiculed into extinction.
A terminus ante quem is provided by the epitaph of L. Cornelius Cn. f. Scipio Barbatus, consul in 298 BCE (CIL 1{2}:7). Historians record an earlier P. Cornelius Scipio Barbatus, consul in 328 and dictator in 306, but without an inscription we cannot know whether he was actually called *Farba:tos. Historians regularly refer Furii and Valerii to times before the rhotacism of intervocalic -s-, normalizing their names. At any rate the replacement of *farba by <barba> was probably complete by the middle of the 3rd century BCE, and perhaps well before that.
DGK