Re: Ligurian

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:

>
> > If this is a genuine Ligurian/NWB word, I'd link to the root *balt-
> > found in Tuscan (Lucchese) paltenna 'puddle' (an Etruscan loanword)
> > as well as Albanian balt� 'mud, swamp, clay soil' and Slavic
> > *b�lto- 'swamp'.
>
> Those are from a different root. Etr. *palt(h)na, implied by Lucch.
> <paltenna>, is probably based on Lig. *balta: borrowed into Etr., but
> none of these would interchange /l/ with /r/ in this position.
>
> > Why not?
>
> Slavic and other reflexes of the 'swamp' word require original *-l-.
>
> > That's right. But rhotacism apparently happened in the Basque and
> > Spanish words.
>
> Which words are you thinking of? The <balsa> group does not rhotacize.
>

I was specifically referring to dialectal Basque parta 'marsh, swamp', Aragonese bardo, Spanish barro 'mud'.

> AFAIK, this *palta- ~ *balta- is neither Gaulish nor IE. I also wonder
> why IE-ists insist on inventing IE etymologies for non-IE words.
>
> Speaking for myself (only a cub-scout amateur IE-ist), I consider it vitally important to identify probable IE words when looking for REAL non-IE words.
>

But this doesn't look at all as a "probable" IE word.