Re: *aN- varia

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:

> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@> wrote:
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> > > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@> wrote:
> >
> > > > 27 Urgerm. *wexila- : *weGila- "Rohrweihe, Fischadler"
> > > > see Latin aquila
> > >
> > > More likely this [I meant <aquila> only, not the Gmc. word] is
> > > the fem. (sc. <avis> 'bird') of the adj. <aquilus> 'dark,
> > > dusky'. Many birds are dark, but the eagle was being compared
> > > to other AUGURIAL birds.
> >
> > The non-dark ones?
>
> The green woodpecker and the like.

OK.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augur

> Actually, since augurial birds were further subdivided into those
> which signal by flight, and those which signal by voice (oscines),
> only the former class would be relevant here.
>
> > > Morphological comparison with <Aquilo:> 'North Wind' i.e.
> > > 'Darkener' suggests borrowing from Etruscan (pace
> > > Ernout-Meillet).
> >
> > I think we should remember that magic was the nuclear physics of
> > the day, thus a much more likely field to search for original
> > senses, eg. of *aN-. I like "terrible, foreboding; premonition"
> > better, thus the "fear" sense, from "constriction of the mind",
> > from "narrow passage" ("dire straits"), including rivers (*axw-,
> > *ap-, *up-).
> > Hippocrates
> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hippocrates
> > had a theory of the nature of winds from the four points of the
> > compass
> > http://tinyurl.com/y8k96rs
> > I'd rather derive the "dark" sense from "tempest, storm".
>
> Eagles supposedly were never struck by lightning, hence their
> association with the Storm God. But this would be a roundabout way
> of deriving <aquilus>, more difficult than my proposal. The woman
> "corpore aquilo" in Plautus had a dark body, not a stormy one.

But perhaps a dusk-y one?

> (I know Windy had stormy eyes, but the Association is two millennia
> too late to be relevant.)

Ernout-Meillet on these two:

'aquilo:, -o:nis (et aquilus, cf. Thés. II 376,9sqq. M.L.586 et 587), m.: aquilon.
Le nom complet est aquilo: uentus (cf. Nep. Mi.1,5; P.F. 20,14 aquilo uentus a uehementissimo uolatu ad instar aquilae appellatur). On voit par Festus que les anciens rattachent aquilo: à aquila et non à aquilus comme le font les modernes. Ce sont les anciens qui ont probablement raison; aquilo: n'est pas le vent sombre; il est qualifié de cla:rus par Vg., G.1,460, par opposition à nigerrimus auster 3,378; cf. Thés. II 376,48sqq. L'explication rapportée par Isid., Nat. rer. (Suét., p.339 Reiff.), aquilo, qui et boreas uocatur, ex alto flans gelidus atque siccus et sine pluuia, qui non discutit nubes sed stringit, paraît avoir été inventée dans sa dernière partie pour rattacher coûte que coûte aquilo: à aquilus.
De là:
aquilo:nius; aquilona:lis (aquilo:na:ris ap.Aug.) formé d'après septentrio:na:lis;
aquilo:nia:nus (b.lat.);
aquilo:nigena (Aus.).
Le rapprochement avec un mot baltique,
lit. ãklas "aveugle", etc.
n'explique guère la forme et pas du tout le sens.

aquilus, -a, -um adj.: brun noir.
Rare; arch. et postclass.
Les anciens le rapprochent de aquila, et en font un dérivé de aqua (d'après nu:bilus, nu:bēs); ainsi Festus: aquilus color est fuscus et subniger, a quo aquila dicta esse uidetur... aquilus autem color est ab aqua nominatus. Nam cum antiqui duos omnino naturales nossent, i.e. album et nigrum, interuenerit autem is quoque, qui ita neutri similis est, ut tamen ab utroque proprietatem trahat, potissimwm ab aqua eum denominarunt, cuius incertus est color, P.F.20,7. Composé subaquilus (en jeu de mots avec subuolturius, Pl., Eu. 422). L'explication par aqua rend mal compte du sens de l'adjectif; on ne voit pas pourquoi l'eau aurait été prise pour désigner une couleur tirant sur le noir (Plaute applique aquilus à une négresse). Peut-être à rattacher à aquila, l'aigle étant l'oiseau sombre, aietou~...mélanos. Pl.. Ph 252. Les adjectifs désignant la couleur sont souvent empruntés à des noms d'animaux.'

and I also think the anciens had raison here. So:
angor -> aquila, aquila -> aquilo, aquila -> aquilus

> > And BTW, I'd throw in Lat. avis "bird" and os- of os-cen (thus
> > "bird song").
>
> Oscines did not merely sing; they indicated something by singing.
> The prefix is the same as in <ostendere>. Their song pointed
> something out which the augur had to interpret.

That sounds right.
'oscen, -inis m.: t. de la langue augurale, s'appliquant aux oiseaux dont le chant est prophétique. De *obs-cen "qui chante en avant", cf. pour le premier terme os-tendo:, et pour le second tubi-cen, etc. L'explication de Festus: oscines aues auspicium ore facientes, P.F. 215,4 (cf.Serv. Ae.3,361) est une étymologie populaire. -
Rare et technique; pas de dérivés. Non roman.'

> Connecting <avis> with <aquilus> and, apparently, <angustus> and
> the rest would require too many ad-hoc phonological assumptions.

I've already made those assumption by proposing
*-aN- -> -a:-/-aw-/-aG-..., (in some parallel language(s))
and I would have to propose an ad hoc limit to that in order to follow your proposal.

> > > Root *acv- 'to cover' vel sim., with postfix *acv-il- 'to cover
> > > over, darken', pass. adj. *acvile 'darkened, dark' (whence Lat.
> > > <aquilus> as LW), nomen actoris *acvilu 'darkener' (Lat.
> > > <Aquilo:>).
> >
> > I can't find Etr. acvil- "cover". Do you have a reference for it?
>
> The only reference is my own theorizing, hence the asterisk and the
> preceding statement that this analysis is "suggested". We are all
> still waiting for Claudius's Etruscan grammar to be discovered.

Too bad about that. I hope the cybalist files will make it through the coming dark ages. That's one of the reasons I write here.

> An archaic Etruscan gentilicium <Acvilna> is attested; this appears
> to have been Latinized as *Aquilnios, later <Aquillius>. I can
> only GUESS at the sense of *acvil-; 'dark' or the like is SUGGESTED
> by <aquilus> and <Aquilo:> if they are indeed borrowings (which is
> highly plausible morphologically), and by the place named Aquilonia
> near the modern Carbonara. Regarding Etr. -il- as a verbal postfix
> comes from good internal analysis, and I do not hesitate to extract
> a root *acv-, but it might well mean something other than 'cover',
> which is why I hedge it with "vel sim.".

As in 'cloud cover'? That metaphor sees the clouds from above, and I think that would be alien to them then. A descendant actually meaning "cover" would have been nice.


Torsten