Re: was The Finnic issue

From: dgkilday57
Message: 67929
Date: 2011-07-25

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Rick McCallister <gabaroo6958@...> wrote:
>
> [DGK]
>
> I prefer to consider NWB as a late dialect of Continental Belgic. At this
> point I have no criteria for distinguishing Insular from Continental Belgic, or
> internal dialectal differences, so I am just covering bases here. There may
> well be too little surviving information to draw any plausible inferences. As
> for the position of Belgic within Indo-European, my working hypothesis is that
> it belongs with Illyrian (sensu lato), so the closest well-attested language to
> it would be Messapic. We do have an apa-Name down there, <Salapia> (not
> 'salt-water', but 'involving tide-water or overflowing water') as well as
> <Messapia> itself, perhaps 'place in the midst of water'.
>
> DGK
>
>
> Does Salamanca fit into this anyway?
>

My guess is that Salamanca, Salapia, and Krahe's OEH river-names in Sal- (Sala, Salantia, *Salara, Salia, Salica, *Salma, Salmasa, Salmo:na, Salusia) all have the same IE root. Krahe himself cited Old Prussian <salus> 'torrent', Middle Irish <sal> 'sea', and Latin <salum> 'rolling of the sea' as corradical with these hydronyms.

Pokorny placed the rivers Sala under his root *sal-(1) 'salt' (IEW 878-9), the rivers Salia with <salus> etc. under *salo- 'waving' (879-80), and various words for '(dirty) gray, dusky' and 'willow' under a third root *sal-(2) 'gray'. More recently Kortlandt reconstructed a hysterodynamic PIE paradigm for 'salt': nom. *seh2ls, acc. *sh2elm, gen. *sh2los. This suggests the possibility of uniting Pokorny's three roots into one, *seh2l- 'to overflow, flood' vel sim. In river-names, the zero-grade element Sal- refers to the flooding tendency of the rivers thus named. One source of salt was the residue from intermittently flooded tidal basins. Willows grow in wetlands subject to flooding, so Lat. <salix> and its relatives are probably based on environment, not color. The 'gray' word, Sanskrit <sa:la->, <sa:ra->, Old English <so:l>, has normal grade and probably meant 'salt-colored', following the root-noun for 'salt'.

Salapia was probably named after a hydronym *Salapa 'Floodwater, Tidewater' vel sim., essentially a Messapic apa-Name formed like those in the Nordwestblock. Modern <Sàlpi> shows that the ancient accent was <Sálapia>, as we expect for Messapic origin.

Salamanca is evidently Celtiberian with double suffixation of the base. Both suffixes were productive in Celtic, though neither is frequent. Hubschmid identified a Gaulish oronym *Tálamo- in the modern Tálm near Rigolato (Friuli) and the medieval Thalamos (1266 near Gellin, Dép. Doubs). He also postulated a Gaul. *abanko- 'willow' reflected in Franco-Provençal <avan> 'id.', formally identical to Welsh <afanc>, Breton <avañk> 'beaver; water-monster' derived from Celt. *aba: 'water'. We may also compare Portuguese Braga (Lat. Bra:cara, *Bra:cala > Old Port. Bragaa, *Bra:cana > Old Spanish Brágana) with Braganca, whose base is the Celtic 'trouser' word. The sense of *anka/o- is hard to characterize beyond mere association.

Both suffixes are apparently of non-IE origin. The first is atonal, *´-ama (thematized as -amo- in IE borrowings), and occurs in Uxama, Ledisama, and Ibero-Latin <paramus> 'windy treeless plateau', Sp. <páramo>. The second is found in Sp. <barranca> 'deep hollow, gorge, ravine'. I do not know whether Septimanca (now Simancas on the Duero) contained this suffix and was folk-etymologized after Lat. <septem>, <septimus>, or created on the spot from an Ibero-Latin appellative *anca. One might postulate a Vasco-Iberian *hanka 'bent part of something, river-bend, etc.' which retained its generic sense in Iberian *anka, but underwent a semantic shift similar to Italian <gamba> to become Basque <(h)anka> 'leg'. But I have no evidence for a sequence of seven bends on the Duero near Simancas, and no other evidence for a self-standing *anca in Iberian place-names, so this latter analysis is purely speculative.

DGK