Re: Basque mendi 'mountain'

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

>
> At 6:16:33 PM on Thursday, March 29, 2012, Tavi wrote:
>
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
> > <gpiotr@> wrote:
>
> >> Fairly late Latin, at that. In the earliest stratum of
> >> loans, before the sixth century, Goidelic *kW was
> >> regularly substituted for Latin /p/, as in planta >
> >> *kWlanda > cland (and panna, pascha, purpura, Patricius >
> >> cann, caisc, corcur, Cothriche, etc.).
>
> > I'm afraid Latin isn't the only source of p- > Goidelic
> > *kW-. For example, Middle Irish céite 'hill, eminence,
> > open space, assembly' < Goidelic *kWantjo- 'hill', which
> > corresponds to the substrate root *pant- I mentioned
> > before.
>
> It's from PCelt. *kwantyo- 'flat hill', with normal
> developments in Goidelic and Brittonic.

Matasovic
Proto-Celtic: *kwantyo- 'flat hill' [Noun]
Old Irish: céite[io and iā, m and f] 'hill, open space'
Middle Welsh: pant 'valley'
Middle Breton: pantet (OBret.) gl. imminet
Proto-Indo-European: *kwem-t- 'hill'
IE cognates: Lat. cumulus 'hill', OE hwamm
Notes: The alternation between an io and an iā stem in OIr. probably shows that this word is a substantivized adjective; the original meaning could have been 'protruding' vel. sim. The reading and the meaning of OBret. pantet are uncertain (some read it as Lat. pandit).
References: LEIA C-58, DGVB 280, De Bernardo Stempel 1999: 273

> A substrate root in *p- is most unlikely.

Why?


Torsten