Re: Latin merx

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

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> >
> > This connection is denied by Osthoff (IF 6:9-14, 1896), who refers the
> Skt. word
> > to IE *mr.k^-, citing also the noun <mars'anam>. Vulcan is not known
> for
> > touching things lightly, but for melting metals, and his epithet
> <Mulciber>
> >(with the suffix *-dHro-) is most likely 'Melter', indicating that Lat.
> > <mulceo:> literally meant 'I cause to melt' or 'I soften', later used
> in a figurative sense.
> >
> Not so. If <Vulcan> is indeed related to <Mulci-ber>, then the latter
> must be a loanword from some Italic language, where <-ber> is the
> equivalent of native Latin <-fer> < IE *bher-. It has nothing to do with
> <mulceo:>.

Learn to read more carefully. I neither stated nor implied that <Vulca:nus> is etymologically related to <Mulciber>. Also, note that intervocalic *-bH- regularly becomes Latin -b-; it is P-Italic which shows -f-. In Latin objective compounds with <-fer>, like <signifer>, the -f- has been introduced from the simplex <fero:> by analogy of <armiger> to <gero:>, etc.

The proposal that <Mulciber> is to <mulceo:> as <latebra> is to <lateo:>, of native Latin origin with the implemental suffix *-dHlo-/-dHla:-, is far more plausible than groping in the dark for borrowing from an unidentified language.

> This of course raises the question of the actual etymology of the root
> *Vulc- ~ *Mulc-, (as you suggest) possibly 'to melt, to soften'.

I proposed no such vacillating root. My argument involved only <mulceo:> and words to which it might be related through known soundlaws.

> > Scholars supporting an Etruscan origin for Latin <merx> and its
> relatives include Hofmann (not Walde!) and Watkins, who are not
> specialists in the field of Etruscan loanwords in Latin. Among scholars
> who have published monographs in this field, such as Ernout, Breyer, and
> Watmough, I am not aware of any support for deriving <merx> this way.
> While it is possible for Latin to borrow Etruscan nouns as
> consonant-stems (such as <satelles> 'bodyguard, attendant' from Etr.
> <zatlath>, probably 'axe-striker' vel sim., referring to the lictors of
> Tarquinius Superbus), there is no parallel for borrowing the totality of
> *merk-, *merku-, *merka:-, and *merke:d- from Etruscan. Since no
> evidence for a root *merk- can be extracted from Etruscan texts anyway,
> such a borrowing hypothesis explains nothing and should be discarded.
> >
> But Etruscan has *marx-, with a different vocalism, so a borrowing is
> still possible.

Onomastic evidence is overwhelmingly against such a change in vocalism when Latin borrows from Etruscan; cf. Lat. Larcius, Largius = Etr. Larcna, etc.

DGK