Re: Latin merx

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

>
> Learn to read more carefully.

PLEASE use "please" before an imperative verb form. Just to be polite.

> I neither stated nor implied that <Vulca:nus> is etymologically

related to <Mulciber>.

Of course, you didn't, because this was my own hypothesis.

> 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.

>

Possibly.

> 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.

>

I suppose you mean *-dhro-.

> > 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.

>

My own interest lies on the etymology of Vulca:nus and its possible
relation with <mulceo:>

> > 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.

>

I still see this root is a good candidate to be a loanword.