Re: floor

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

>
> I never said that I thought these words were borrowed. I regard Basque <txakur'> as inherited from West Mediterranean.
>

But its phonetic shape is mostly un-Basque. Also Basque has lots of loanwords from extinct languages.

> The only plausible cognates which I have seen are those cited by Hubschmid, namely Corsican <ghia'garo> 'hunting dog' and Sardinian <g^a'garu> 'id.'.
>

Don't forget Balkanic zagar and Greek zágaros, zágari 'a k. of bloodhound' (Trombetti). But IMHO these words aren't related to zakur but they reflect a Mediterranean Wanderwort found in PNC *tsEhwo:le (~ -a) 'fox, jackal', Kartvelian *dz\aGl-, Dravidian *dZa:[v]il- 'dog' and ultimately from the Eurasiatic root *dZE:lGV ~ *dZE:GlV 'a small carnivore animal (fox, weasel)' (Dolgopolsky's ND 2776).

> For the phonology, cf. Bq. <etxe>, <etxa-> 'house' from Celtic *tegja:,
>

This etymology is highly unlikely.

> As (e.g.) <txori> was regarded as the diminutive (properly hypocoristic) of <zori>,
>

This is a case of homonymy, as txori 'bird' is semantically unrelated to zori 'luck'.

> so has <zakur'> been formed in Basque as the augmentative of <txakur'>.
>

But there also exists the forms kakur and ttattur /cacur:/, the last with expressive palatization, which suggest the initial consonant was formerly a velar, assibilated in txakur, zakur.

I'd also suggest we continue discussions involving Basque in my own list: http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/vasco-caucasian/