2012/5/4, dgkilday57 <
dgkilday57@...>:
>
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
> <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@...> wrote:
>>>
>> [top-posting corrected]
>> >>
>> >>> 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])?
>> >> [DGK:]
>> >> 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...
> [DGK:]
> 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!
>
Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
So, where do Yo suggest Ir. bairt comes from? To my limited
knowledge, there's no place-name whose stem is simple *Barti-s
>> 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
> [DGK:]
> The jury (Piotr, Anders, etc.) is still out on the sequence of soundlaws
> required for you to have your /o:/-grade.
Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
If it comes out that a sound-law has to be revised or changed, I
immediately modify every reconstruction of mine that can be involved.
This is obvious and natural.
As for my theory, I don't think anyone cares about it. I've
mentioned it for the sake of the argument.
Maybe this particular question runs the risk of remaining
unsolved, because one of the two possibilities, i.e. */o:/ > /o/ in
Osthoff's contexts, would be formally always interpretable as PIE
short */o/; all the demonstration insists on the scanty evidence of
not otherwise explainable /a/ (therefore < */a:/ < */o:/), but if on
one side You propose that every instance is a Ligurian loan (if indeed
for Ir. hapax bairt, then You'll have no limits for other Celtic
items: they'll be even closer to Antiquity in time and to Liguria in
space) and You seriously think that while one Irish attestation
(bairt, bairte) is uncertain, no attestation at all - in a language
whose reconstruction is much more hypothetic and moreover not in its
proper area - is more valid (an attestation in a Celtic derivative
isn't a proper attestation, because the matter of discussion is
precisely the original non-Celticity of 'Ligurian' *barti-), then I
conclude that we don't have any scientific criterion in common (I
confess that if were in Your situation, I'd have given up much
earlier, but evidently You have another perception, it's Your full
right, but the consequence is that we are losing our time).
> [DGK:]
> 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.
Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
My "truckload" is of 5000 characters. I've excerpted it from a
paper of 110,000 characters, without bibliography (restricted version
of a three-time longer paper); 110,000 - 5000 = 105,000 characters of
Celtic and PIE reconstructions. How would You have labeled such a
greater truckload?
> [DGK:]
> Now,
> I have no doubt that many of these names are indeed Celtic, such as those
> implying *Brig-.
Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
5 km SW of Barzago, whose name You analyse as Ligurian stem +
Gaulish suffix, there's Briosco < *Brig-usko-, precisely with *Brig-;
down there, the Celts would have coined a hybrid place-name with
Celtic root and Ligurian suffix or Celticized its root and retained
its suffix, just the opposite of *Barti-a:kon. Do You really maintain
that?
> [DGK:]But your methodology provides no means of distinguishing
> Celtic from non-Celtic,
Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
As everybody knows, none of us is the Voice of Truth. Our task is
to apply a methodology.
The methodology I apply is: I chose an area where the presence of a
given language is assured (in this case, by inscriptions), I apply
independently verified sound-laws and see what comes out.
Distinguishing Celtic from non-Celtic is a procedure that can be
started only *after* that one has completed both the application of
the Celtic analysis and the application of every non-Celtic analysis.
Dubious and ambiguous cases can emerge only from such a preliminary
work.
I'm doing my part for Celtic; You are doing Your part for a
language that maybe never existed as such, but has been anyway
seriously proposed and therefore must be taken into consideration.
Beside that, we have to look for ambiguous Latin/Celtic and
Germanic/Celtic cases. As Tavi will promptly remember to us, we have
to take into consideration Basque as well (although no Basque
linguistic text has ever been found in this area).
I fear that in 1957 we won't have completed our tasks yet.
> [DGK:]
> presuming you have already weeded out Roman and
> later names.
Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
Roman names have been investigated by generations of Italian
philologists, fortunately so influenced (up to the present day! They
never realize that) by nationalist prejudice that they have
marvellously applied the procedure I've just mentioned: to analyze
everything through Latin / Romance.
A similar approach was about to be started before II WW in
Germanic (Gothic and Langobardic) perspective, but some problems, You
know, have interrupted it... I've tried from time to time to resume
it, but it's less productive than Celtic, so for the time being I
privilege the Celtic approach. (On the contrary, the Germanic approach
is extremely productive in both Rhaeto-Cisalpine and Italian
surnames.)
By now we are provisionally in condition to contrast Latin /
Romance and PIE > Celtic etymologies.
An example:
Three km North of Barzio (DGK: the pure Ligurian form without
-a:ko-?) there's Primaluna, usually understood as Latin pri:ma lu:na
'first moon'; I rather compare Welsh 1 pryf, Ir. crum(h) 'worm, larve,
maggot, fly, insect, small animal of the forest, reptile, snake,
dragon etc.', and Ir. (con-)lón, (con-)lúan 'moor', Bret. louan
'copse': PIE *kwrimo h2lounah2 > *kwrimo:louna: > PC *kwrima:louna: >
Gaulish *prima:louna: > Latin *Prima:louna > *Prima:lu:na, with
laryngeal lengthening in composition, Celtic */o:/ > /a:/ and p-Celtic
*/kw/ > /p/.
There's also some instance of Latin vs. Germanic vs. Celtic
etymology, but now I have absolutely no more time
> [DGK:]
> 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
Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
Very good! Thank You.
I immediately dare to propose a case.
Between Barzio and Primaluna there's Pasturo, cf. Oir. 1 cas
'curly, intricate', Middle Ir. 2 úr 'green': PIE *kwösto-puh2ro- >
*kwösto-pu:ro- > PC *kwasto-[p]u:ro- > Gaulish *pastou:ro- > Latin
*Pastouru- > *Pastu:ru-.
Do You have objections?