From: Tavi
Message: 66326
Date: 2010-07-14
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:
>If as I think, IE *dH > s in Italoid, then *-dH-t- would give -st-.
> > I think Latin <*Auster*> 'South wind', Lithuanian <*aus^trìnis
> > (vêjas)*> 'NE wind', Latvian* <àustrums> *'East', Germanic
> > **austra-n* 'East', Slavic **u:strj-* 'summer' are all loanwords from
> > Italoid **aust-r-*, a reflex of IE **Xaidh-* 'to burn; fire'. I
> > suppose Italoid had **-dh* > *-st *as in native Latin <*aesta:s,
> > aestus*> but with a different vocalism.
>
> In Latin, both *-sr- and *-dHr- would have given /-br-/, and in view of
> what we know about Italic phonology there is no earthly reason why *dH
> should have developed into /st/ in that branch or any language
> genetically close to it. Indeed, we get -d- in <aede:s> 'hearth'. The
> morphological cluster *-dH-t- gives both /-ss-/ and /-st-/ in Latin
> (iussus vs. aestus), and there are too few examples to be sure which of
> these developments is "regular".
>
From the works of Joan Coromines and Francisco Villar, Italoid was somewhere between Italic and Baltic in the IE dialectal cloud. It can be labelled as a substrate language because it's almost only attested in toponomastics and loanwords to other languages. The only known Italoid inscription is a votive lead foil from Amélie-les-Bains (Banys d'Arles), a thermal spring in the Eastern Pyrenees (Roussillon), which has been studied by Coromines.
According to Villar, Latin words with /a/ vocalism (e.g. mare 'sea') instead of the expected /o, u/ are potential loanwords from Italoid, as this language confused *a and *o into /a/. For example casa 'hut, cottage' < *kadHa:, castrum 'fortress' < *kadH-tero- (compare Greek kathédra 'chair') versus native custo:s, -odis 'custodian, guardian' < *kudH-t- from IE *kudH-. There's a similar root with two variants, one reconstructed by Mallory & Adams as *ket- 'room' (Old Irish kathir 'town', Old English he:aDor 'enclosure, prison', Finnish kota 'tent, hut, house'), and another one *(s)keut- ~ *(s)ku:t- 'skin, cover' (Latin cutis 'skin, covering', Greek kytos 'covering', skytos 'hide, leather', Germanic *xudjo:n 'cover' (French huche 'chest (for keeping bread or flour)', Basque (k)utxa 'chest' and Spanish hucha 'moneybox' < *hutja are Germanic loanwords), Uralic *kud^jV 'cover, case') by Nikolayev. Probably related are also Yenisseian *xu?s 'tent (made of birch bark), house' (which according to Arnaud Fournet is the source of Germanic *xu:s 'house') and NEC *kydwV 'basket, receptacle', probably the source of Greek kíste: 'basket' > Latin cista > English chest via an Aegean (i.e. the family of Etruscan) loanword.> Of course <auster> may contain the suffix of contrast, PIE *-tero-, but
> "a different vocalism" is not something to be treated lightly. _WHY_
> auster and not *aester? Are we back to etymology as "une science où les
> voyelles ne font rien et les consonnes fort peu de chose"?
>
Other examples of possible Italoid loanwords outside Latin are Greek hro:ks ~hra:ks 'berry, grape', from IE *dHreg^h- 'sloetree, blackthorn' (Celtic *dragena: 'sloe, fruit of the blackthorn', Albanian drédhë 'strawberry' < *dHro:g^Ha:), and Celtic *esok- 'salmon' (a word from the Rhine area) from IE *dHg^HuH- 'fish' (although in this case we would expect a long vowel /o:/ instead of /o/). Of course, probably Italoid isn't a single but rather a family of related languages.