From: dgkilday57
Message: 65717
Date: 2010-01-21
>One of Kuhn's most convincing /p/-words is 'pinky' (fifth finger), from some derivative of *penkWe 'five'. (One might consider here also Eng. dial. <pink> 'minnow', for the sense cf. <fingerling>.) Now, in both Celtic and Italic, *p...kW... was assimilated to *kW...kW... as we see in <qui:nque>, <quercus>, <coquus>, <cunctus>. If, as seems very likely, the name of the Silva Hercynia comes from *perkWu-, it could not be an inherited Celtic name, but borrowed by Celts from another IE source long after the assimilation was complete, but before their */p/ had gone to zero. I suspect that the source was NWB, and that it was the Q-Celtic Volcae who overran them in this area around 400 BCE. One possible Volcan substratal relic is Breisgau Alamannic <Kinz> 'hollow way' which Geiger-Bynon has argued is cognate with Middle Irish <ce:te> 'way, meadow' and Welsh <pant> 'valley, dent'. I accept this equation, from Celtic *kWent-, *kWn.t-, but I disagree with G.-B.'s view that Gaulish had no clear P- or Q-character, and with her attempt to connect *kWent- with Gmc. 'path'. In my view the latter is a pre-Grimm borrowing from Gaul. *bato- 'trodden over, gone across' etc., verbal adj. from PIE *gWeh2- (in Insular Celt. 'pass away, die'). And I consider Gaulish to be securely P-Celtic. Where we find Q-Celtic relics in NW Europe we are probably dealing with Volcae.
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> NWB seems Para- a lot of things, just like Lusitanian seems "Para-Celtic" and/or "Para-Italic" -- and it could well be something related to Lusitanian that acquired a lot of Germanic influence. Perhaps it was a related Italoid language that went north instead of west c. 1000 BCE.