From: Andrew Jarrette
Message: 64822
Date: 2009-08-19
| Question: Is Germanic *tu:n- (> Engl <town>, Germ <Zaun>) considered to be cognate to or an early loan from Celtic *du:n- as in OIr <du:n> 'fortress, fortified city' and Welsh <din> 'fortress' (also meanings such as 'camp', 'castle', 'fort' in these languages, not sure which)? I believe the last I read was that the Celtic words go back to PIE *dhu:n-, and the Germanic words are pre-Grimm's-Law loans from Celtic. Is this still the accepted view? What is the original meaning of this *dhu:n-? Is it closer to the Celtic meanings of 'fortified place, fortified settlement', or to the Old English meaning 'enclosure', or to the OHG meaning 'fence, hedge, enclosing barrier'? I see all of these meanings possibly unified under the basic sense 'walled town' (thereby both enclosed and fortified). This would suggest that the Old English meaning is closer to the original sense than is the OHG meaning, at least as I see it; would the present-day English meaning 'town' possibly be much older than generally believed, and go back to the original meaning 'walled town' without any intervening OE meanings like 'yard, garden, field, manor, farm, homestead, house, village'? Or is the Proto-Germanic meaning definitely 'enclosing barrier' as in OHG and German is therefore more conservative than English (which only had the meaning 'enclosed place' and developments of this basic meaning, apparently) at least within Germanic? Anybody care to answer these questions? Andrew |