Re: floor

From: Tavi
Message: 68062
Date: 2011-09-21

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
>
> The phonetic shape agrees well with <lapur'> 'thief'.
>
> > But this is clearly an IE loanword (PIE *la(m)bh- 'to seize'), not a
> > native one.
>
> From which IE language?
>
From an extinct one, possibly Italoid (aka Sorotaptic), where *bh > f like in Italic.

> With what IE suffix? How did Basque get the strong vibrant /R/ out of it?
>
The suffix is clearly un-IE. You can have IE words with un-IE suffixes and viceversa (e.g. Hispanic Latin cuni-culum 'rabbit').

> No other examples have been given showing how *gjak- can yield dzaG- in Georgian, so this connection must be regarded as highly speculative. For that matter, no argument favoring direct substratal relation over borrowing has been presented for this word.
>
Douglas, do you know what does "macro-comparative framework" mean? This is clearly an example of a very old (probably Neolithic) Wanderwort which spread as far as Dravidian.

> Alessio's rejection of the relation between the Basque and Sardo-Corsican words is groundless. Even if you (Tavi) dismiss the traditional connection between <zori> and <txori> as a vast bird-wing conspiracy among Vascologists, we have <txerri> (Guip., Bisc.), originally a hypocoristic 'piggy', from <zerri> 'swine, pig'. Thus <txakur'>, although primary, could easily be interpreted as a hypocoristic 'doggy', leading to <zakur'> 'dog' as a back-formation. The usual development of initial gj- is dz^-, which present-day Basque does not allow, but its devoiced form ts^- is written <tx->, so there is simply no phonetic objection to <txakur'> reflecting *gjak-.
>
Sorry, but I'm afraid you missed entirely my point about the form kakur and my alternative etymology for this word. As I said before, IMHO, the Basque cognate of this word (actually a remote one) is azeri, azegari (B) 'fox' < Paleo-Basque *a-segali.

> Alessio's attempt to connect <zakur'> with <segu:sius> is equally groundless. C.C. Uhlenbeck found seven examples of Basque words showing dialectal alternation of s- with z-, but <zakur'> is not included. I agree that <segu:sius> is probably Ligurian in origin,
>
Not Ligurian, but Cantabrian (a Celtic or para-Celtic language), as a compound *sagu:sio- from *sag- 'to seek' and *(d)u:sio- 'animal'.

> Usually Northern Basque /h/ between like vowels represents earlier /n/
>
Not always. Many -h- come from an earlier geminate voiceless velar *-kk- as a consequency of what I call Martinet's Law, e.g. behi 'cow' < *bekki < *bekko- (cfr. Italian becco 'male goat'). By contrast, Iberian (where Martinet's Law didn't happen) has biki (as most Iberian texts don't differentiate between fortis/lenis stops due to the limitations of the script, this could either represent kk or k).

I must insist this list isn't the adequate place to discuss Basque and/or "West Mediterranean" items, so I beg you register on my own list.