> > But before proceeding further, I should check what Du Cange has to say about <larricium>.
>
> Enough to posit a West Mediterranean *larr-. I am trying to see whether West Germanic 'lark' can be referred to a NWB compound based on this substratal word.
>
> DGK
>
>
> *****R I don't think lark can be linked to *larr because lark is from something like *lawarkaz; see Old Spanish laverca from Gothic or Frankish. There is a Scots word in an old song laverock which I think means "lark" but it's been a while
>
Schrijver's article
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/62677
has for the 'bird language:
'*la&wað-, *a-lawð- 'lark' â">
Old Icelandic lævirki,
Old English la:werce,
Old High German le:rahha, le:rihha,
Middle Dutch le:werke,
Finnish leivo(nen);
Gaulish (in Latin) alauda'
But Grzegorz Jagodzinski
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/50427
pointed to
'5. "Lark". OE la:verce points at Gmc. *laiwVrk- which is also proved by Finnish leivonen. The Latin < Celtic form alauda may, or may not, belong here. If it is related, why we have a- not in Germanic here, like in the previous example? And two questions remain: a) is the Finnish form isolated within the Uralic family, and then we should suppose it was borrowed from Germanic, or contrary, it is not isolated, and may have been the source for Gmc., and b) if the word is Semitic, which are its cognetes?
Btw. The Polish word for "lark" is "skowronek". The Russian word is
"z^avoronok". The first parts of the words are "corrupted", cf. also various Ukrainian forms: z^ajvoronok, z^ovranok, dz^evoronok. All we can reconstruct for Proto-Slavic is the second part *-vorn-. Taking into consideration the variety of Slavic forms, I would not be very surprised if it appeared that Germanic and Slavic forms are cognates (note -vorn- in Slavic and -wVrk- in Germanic, absent in Finnish), to resentment of Neo-grammarians...'
The UEW does not list 'leivonen' and its putative Uralic/FU cognates.
Anybody want to try a reconstruction? I got a vague sense this is related to the kwiat/cvet "flower" set of words (although I'm not even certain there is such a group). From my favorite phoneme *λ- ?
Torsten