From: Tavi
Message: 69859
Date: 2012-06-22
--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
>
> Paleo-Celtic would indeed have come from farther east, and back-washes
> of population are nothing new. I am looking for the area where
> Proto-Celtic acquired its distinctive features, which to me is the
> Urheimat. I meant to say "Asturias" and vicinity, essentially NW
> Iberia, as the Celtic homeland in this working hypothesis.
>
> > Actually, it looks like you had a Freudian slip, in what the /u/ of
> > Austria shifted its place and became Asturia.
>
> I forgot the plural, which is perhaps a different sort of Freudian
slip.
>
Well, Austria (or more accurately, the area North to the Alps) is the
"classical" Celtic homeland.
> The place-name Berganza (Prov. Lugo, Prov. A'lava), with the steep
> coastal region Bergantin~os (Prov. La Corun~a), corresponds to the
> Norwegian river-name Bergunda, continuing *bHe'rg^H-n.t-ih2
'protecting,
> elevated, difficult' vel sim. River- and place-names of the form
> *Brigantia (Bregenz, Brienz, Brent, Braint) in my opinion are based on
> the root *wreigH- 'to turn, twist, wriggle' (cf. Gallo-Latin
<brigantes>
> 'parasitic worms', Marc. Burd.), not *bHerg^H-.
>
> > What has this to do with OEH?
>
> Everything, since Krahe recognized Bergunda, Berganza, and *Brigantia
as having OEH structure. I disagree with him in not regarding
*Brigantia as the Celtic outcome of zero-grade *bHr.g^H-, since the
other two require full grade.
>
I don't see any reason to consider *Brigantia as non-Celtic. It's a fact
Celtic has zero grade on this root while Germanic does not. Notice also
these toponyms (Bregenz, Brienz) are found in the North Alpine area, not
in NW Iberia.
> Unlike certain scholars, I do not consider ablaut-grades to be
arbitrarily interchangeable, replaced as easily as a woman changes her
jewelry.
>
I don't think OEH actually represents a single linguistic layer. I
remember Guido saying OEH is a kind of potpourri, and I agree with him.
> If Old Western IE (late 3rd mill. BCE) had *bHerg^H-n.t-ih2, there is
no reason to think it would have had *bHr.g^H-n.t-ih2 with the SAME
root, [...]. Bergunda and other Norwegian OEH names with sound-shifts
in place show that Germanic is descended from OWIE, [...]
>
There's also no reason to assume Celtic is descended from this "OWIE".
Incidentally, neither to reconstruct "voiced aspirated" stops for this
language.