Re: Ligurian

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@...> wrote:

>>
> [top-posting corrected]
> >>
> >> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
> >> <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@> wrote:
> >>>
> >>> Sorry, my fault (false friend: I have taken it from DIL, but with
> >>> German Mädchen in mind, so I've been deceived by ingen 'Mädchen' =
> >>> maiden in backtranslation).
> >>> But nevertheless: bairt 'girl' : Gothic barn 'child' (I was about
> >>> to write 'kind'!...), once attested (+ bairte), we're linguists, not
> >>> lawyers ("testis unus testis nullus"), so why doubtful? The Auraicept
> >>> na n-éces are after all a trustworthy source. Whence otherwise
> >>> Continental Celtic *Bartia:kon > Barzâgh / Barzago (Lecch / Lecco
> >>> [Lombardy])?
> >>
> >> Whence otherwise? From Ligurian, of course, with a secondary ending from
> >> Gaulish superstrate. To wit, PIE *bHr.ti'- 'act of bearing' (Skt.
> >> <bhr.ti's.>, Av. <-b@...@tis^>, Lat. <fors> 'luck, chance', OE <ge-byrd>
> >> 'birth', etc.) regularly yields Lig. *bartis 'inflow, inlet, site of
> >> importation' vel sim., cognate with Celt. *britis 'carrying, judgment'
> >> (OIr
> >> <brith>, etc.). Retained as a local term by the Gaulish invaders,
> >> *bartis
> >> becomes the base of *Bartia:kon 'town near the inlet' vel sim. Much
> >> better
> >> than trying to explain it as pure Celtic.
> >>
> >> DGK

[Bh.:]

> And of course Your theory predicts that the Gaulish invaders have
> been so careful to retain from Ligurian just those terms whose /ar/
> was from PIE syllabic */r/ before stop (while all other place-names
> [200] are plainly Celtic) and to let them arrive to Ireland just in
> time for a registration in the Auraicept na n-�ces...

No, my theory explains *bartis as a toponomastic loanword from Ligurian to Celtic, with no phonological criteria applied by the borrowers. Its retention is, pardon the root, fortuitous. Kilday finally gets some good luck!

> If You really think that all these surely plausible but surely ad
> hoc conjectures are better than a straightforward Celtic
> Lautgesetzlichkeit, please continue, so that all Members will judge by
> themselves who is right

The jury (Piotr, Anders, etc.) is still out on the sequence of soundlaws required for you to have your /o:/-grade. In the meantime, you have dumped a truckload of place-names which you have uniformly explained as Celtic, often by merely citing similar-sounding Irish, Welsh, or Breton words. Now, I have no doubt that many of these names are indeed Celtic, such as those implying *Brig-. But your methodology provides no means of distinguishing Celtic from non-Celtic, presuming you have already weeded out Roman and later names. It is like a broken sieve of Eratosthenes which declares every odd integer a prime. Rather than attempting to deal with the entire truckload at once, I intend to post comments addressing individual place-names as this thread continues.

DGK