Re: Town, Zaun, and Celtic Dun-

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:

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> --- On Tue, 8/18/09, Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...> wrote:
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> From: Andrew Jarrette <anjarrette@...>
> Subject: [tied] Town, Zaun, and Celtic Dun-
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Tuesday, August 18, 2009, 8:50 PM
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> Question:
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> 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?
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> 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?
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> Anybody care to answer these questions?
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> Andrew
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> Watkins mentions that these words are limited to Celtic and Germanic. So it may be Celtic subtrate. If I had to guess an original meaning, I'd say "height, hill", see English dune and down "hill" < ? Briton and see "citadel, fortified high place" as secondary meanings and "town" as a tertiary meaning
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I just see where the American Heritage Dictionary derives all of these from the root *dheu&- "to close, finish, come full circle". From this point of view the meaning 'enclosure' would be the earliest (and I don't know whether the sense 'enclosed space' or 'enclosing barrier' would be earlier, I'd like to find out), from which 'walled town' might develop, then 'fortified height', then 'height, hill' (as OE <du:n> > NE <down> and MDu <du:ne> 'sandy hill' > NE <dune>).

To me it seems that two different roots are involved: one that means 'a height' (thence in one stream 'hill', in another 'fortified height, castle, walled town'), and one that might mean 'to close, finish, come full circle' (thence 'enclosure', thence in one stream 'enclosed place, yard, village, town' and in another 'fence, hedge' -- but to me it seems the first stream could also have been 'enclosed place' > 'walled town' > 'town'?). In any case I think American Heritage's lumping all of these together is probably a bit of a stretch. I don't think it's natural to derive the word for 'hill' from a root meaning 'close, finish, come full circle'. I think they may have done this only to make *dheu&- seem close in meaning to *dheu- 'die'. I would assign the Germanic words to another root *deu&- or similar. The sense 'finish, come full circle' might be close enough to the meaning 'long, to last' for *deu&- in Latin <du:ra:re> and Greek <de:rós> 'long'.

Andrew