Re: squirrel

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott" <bm.brian@...> wrote:

>
> At 7:26:49 PM on Friday, March 16, 2012, Torsten wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Brian M. Scott"
> > <bm.brian@> wrote:
>
> >> At 6:18:45 AM on Thursday, March 15, 2012, Torsten wrote:
>
> >>> However, Norwegian 'ras'. It can't be Slavic liquid
> >>> metathesis(?); is it Schrijver's bird lnguage?
>
> >> It's ON <rass>, metathesized from earlier (attested)
> >> <ars>.
>
> > Obviously it is ('ars' still in jysk), but why? That's not
> > a regular rule.
>
> Why should it be?

I have a hunch those metatheses occur in loanwords in Germanic. In this case Schrijver's bird language, in which case it would be a case of the a-prefix.

> Neither is <bridd> ~ <bird>,

AFAIK that word is isolated in English.

> not to mention a number of other /rV/ ~ /Vr/ metatheses.

PIE *bhren-, *bhron-, *bhr.n- would regularly give
P-Germ. *brin-, *bran-, *burn-, which is bound to get regularised one way or the other. *bhrest-, *bhrost-, *bhr.st- similarly.

> De Vries s.v. <ars> suggests taboo deformation, which could
> certainly be a(nother) contributing factor.
>

Faute de mieux, yes.


Torsten