--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
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> [...]
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> The Romance forms are usually referred to Gallo-Latin <beccus> 'beak', first mentioned by Suetonius, "id valet gallinacei rostrum" (Vitell. 18). However, Sardinian (Logudorese) has <biccu>, which is hard to explain by crossing of *beccu with *picu or whatever. Kuhn himself favored a pre-IE substrate extending up the Atlantic coast into Scandinavia, which I call "West Mediterranean", and if we assume WM *bikk- 'beak' vel sim., borrowed into Gaulish as *bekk-, but shifted into Gmc. *pikk- by the Lautverschiebung, we can explain all these forms. Additionally, Vulgar Latin *picca:re would come from Gmc. (not from a by-form *piccus 'woodpecker' beside <pi:cus>). The Romance situation is complicated by crossing with VL *pi:ca:re extracted from *expi:ca:re 'to shuck grain' (Lat. <exspi:ca:re>, from <spi:ca>) which in turn yielded Rom. *pica, *picu 'pointy object'.
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Another obscure Celtic word can be explained in a similar way. If West Mediterranean *bikk- (whence Logudorese <biccu> 'beak', Belgic/NWB *bikk-, Gmc. *pikk-) was indeed borrowed into Celtic as *bekk- (whence Gallo-Latin <beccus> and the other Romance 'beak'-words), we should expect WM */u/ to get borrowed as Celt. */o/ as well. This elucidates a peculiarity of one of the key WM lexemes noted by Hubschmid (Sardische Studien 26-27). WM *buda 'marsh-reed, rush, sedge, ulva' etc. is reflected as <abuda>, <tabuda> in Berber (whence Late Lat. <buda> as a Libyan gloss, 'sedge' (Claud. Don.), 'reed-garment' (St. Aug.), 'storea, rush-mat' (CGL)), as <buda> in Sardinian, Corsican, and Sicilian, and as <vuda> in Calabrian, but as <boua> in Old Catalan, whence Cat. <bo,va>, <bo,ga> "mit auffälligem /o,/". Spanish (Salamancan) <bodón> 'pond which dries out in summer' and <bodonal> 'muddy or rush-covered ground' also require *boda as the protoform, which can be assigned to Celtic, this from WM *buda. We can now understand Gaulish *bodina 'boundary' (Medieval Lat. <bodina>, Old French <bodne>) as originally meaning 'rush-covered ground' as well, hence 'low swampy ground', 'boundary of usable land'.
DGK