From: Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
Message: 69511
Date: 2012-05-04
> 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?
>