Re: Bart (was: Ligurian)

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

>
> 2012/6/8, dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...>:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@> wrote:
> >>
> >> W dniu 2012-06-07 03:19, dgkilday57 pisze:
> >>
> >> > Thus the river Druantia in Liguria Transalpina (now Durance) can be
> >> > equated with Skt. Dravanti: 'Running (River)' f. from *drew-n.tih2,
> >> > with
> >> > the same Lig. innov. absent from Celtic. Likewise the smaller rivers
> >> > Drance (*Druantia) in Kt. Wallis, and Durance in De'p. Manche, with
> >> > Drouance in De'p. Calvados, Normandie. That is, Greater Liguria
> >> > stretched across Gaul until it was split by Gaulish invasion and
> >> > expansion from the south (cf. Liv. 5:34).
> >>
> >> Would it include today's northeastern Poland and the River Drwe,ca <
> >> *drUvoNtja, one of Torsten's favourites? (no trace of *dreu- in
> >> Balto-Slavic, and absence of Grimm's Law excludes a Germanic
> >> intermediary).
> >>
> >> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drw%C4%99ca
> >
> > It looks that way. Artemidorus did say that the Ligurians once ranged all
> > the way to the Northern Ocean. Earlier I attributed this remark to
> > misunderstanding on A.'s part of how far north Worms-am-Rhein is, but
> > perhaps he was spot on.
> >
> > DGK
> >
> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>
> So Your Ligurian is, like d'Arbois', Dottin's, Philipon's and
> Kretschmer's, an IE Old European stratum like Pokorny's
> Veneto-Illyrian.

Yes. However, I do not believe in lumping Venetic (with its [h] and [f]) together with Illyrian. I think Macro-Illyrian (Illyrian proper, Macedonian, Paeonian, Messapic, Japygian, probably Rhaetic and Belgic) belongs with Lusitanian in an "Illyro-Lusitanian" node.

> As I've many times pointed out, I'm find such hypotheses very
> attractive. I constantly try to fit them all in a maximal frame; I'm a
> kind of a collectionist of these theories.
> I've noticed that I can found new hypothesis in this perspective
> simply out of one and the same language: 1) In the territory and
> linguistic documentation of language X (of IE descent), I look for an
> ethnonym Y without any linguistic affiliation; 2) I choose a
> place-name that can be geographically associated with this ethnonym;
> 3) I take into consideration the PIE etymology (if any) of this
> place-name; 4) I try to find if it can be modified (especially with
> regard to ablaut) in order to have a similar etymology, maybe from the
> same root and in any case a sufficiently straightforward one, but with
> a different diachronic phonology (Y) as opposed to the one of the
> locally attested language X; 5) I apply diachronic phonology Y to
> every name of X I can; 6) the area of the names with which I've
> succeedingly applied diachronic phonology Y is identified with the
> ancient territory of the linguistic stratum named after the ethnonym
> Y. In X You can read 'Celtic', 'Germanic', 'Baltic', 'Slavic',
> 'Greek', 'Armenian' and so on; in Y You can read 'Sorothaptic',
> 'Latial-Ausonian'/'Palaeo-Umbrian', 'Pelasgian', 'psi-Greek',
> 'Themematic', 'Greltic' and so on.

That sounds like a straw-man procedure.

> What I have to add in order to get a complete picture is to
> examine the opposite possibility, a minimal amount of language
> substitutions. (Alinei's Continuity is in no way minimalist on this
> point, because it takes Pre-Latin languages as superstrata, therefore
> implying a double language superposition - their arrival and their
> death). There's a limit beyond which one's Reductionism is patently
> falsified (e.g. in the case one should try to deny Illyrian or
> Thracian or Continental Celtic); before that very boundary, I think
> it's our duty to find out the minimalist approach. It doesn't mean
> it's right; it suffices that it be both possible and extreme. I can
> myself construct the opposite extreme, applying to each name of X the
> method I've just exposed.

Your opposite extreme requires indecent liberties with ablaut and other matters. One could equally well construct English etymologies for every place-name in the United States. For example, Hoboken (N.J.) could be analyzed as *hobo-ken 'tramp-knowledge', i.e. a good place for a tramp to get a handout, since tramps share knowledge of such places. This would disregard the evidence pointing to a dialectal Dutch etymology as 'high beeches'. English dictionaries are very large and can easily accommodate such analyses for virtually any place-name, just like your Celtic procedure.

DGK