Re: Ligurian

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

> > Lucch. <paltenna> illustrates that this rhotacism did not occur
> pre-dentally. Lombardic <palta> and Piem. <pauta> 'swamp' apparently
> continue the simplex. I do not believe that the p- here is due to
> (re)borrowing from Etruscan. Instead, it very likely comes directly
> from Langobardic *palta, resulting from borrowing of local Gallo-Latin
> *balta after the High German shift had gone to completion. This G-L
> *balta could be of either Ligurian or Gaulish origin, since the root was
> apparently *bHelh{x}-. (Pace Derksen et al., the justification for
> deriving 'swamp' from 'white' is as clear as mud. I think the 'swamp'
> root, originally perhaps 'low, sunken', is distinct from the 'white'
> root, which was probably *bHelh2- on the basis of Greek words.)
> >
> 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.

DGK