From: dgkilday57
Message: 69884
Date: 2012-06-27
>Lengthening metri gratia to avoid three successive short syllables, as in <a:thanatos> 'immortal', is not the same as lengthened grade. It is a poetic license of the epic bard in order to use words which would not otherwise fit into his dactylic hexameter.
> 2012/6/22, dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@...>:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
> > <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@> wrote:
> >>
> >> 2012/6/20, dgkilday57 <dgkilday57@>:
> >>
> >> [...]
> >>
> >> > DGK:
> >> > First, regarding the Po, I know of no evidence that natives ever called
> >> > it
> >> > Eridanus. That was the poetic name of a mythical river.
> >>
> >> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
> >>
> >> It was the name of river in Athens as well. You are assuming the
> >> Greeks simply gave a mythical name to the river near Adria; but they
> >> ordinarily kept quite well local river-names wherever they settled,
> >> or, at least, preferred transparent names (maybe direct translations,
> >> maybe not), but quite rarely purely myhical names like e.g. Styx.
> >> Of course, there are instances like Akh'ero:n, but these - like Styx
> >> - end up as normal PIE river-names (maybe at least partially with
> >> adstrate phonology, e.g. *h1g'heront-). If this were the case with
> >> Adriatic Eridanos, we would come back to the same question: where did
> >> it come from?
>
> > DGK:
> > It could have been formed within Greek using the prefix eri-, and meaning
> > 'much-flowing' (i.e. year-round) or 'great river', hence applied to a poorly
> > known great river of the Northwest, then applied directly when settlement
> > occurred nearby, without bothering to consult the natives.
>
> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>
> At last You use lengthened grades too: Greek eri- has epsilon
> (whatever its initial laryngeal may have been), E:ridan'os - e:ta
> >I accept his etymology for Bodincus while rejecting his assignment to Celtic. It should of course be Ligurian.
> > [...]
> >
> >> > DGK:
> >> > What we do know is
> >> > that Ligurians called the upper part of it Bodegkos/Bodincus, and the
> >> > lower
> >> > part was called Padus. What this means is that Ligurians reached the
> >> > river
> >> > from the west and named it, and some non-Ligurian group reached the
> >> > river
> >> > from the east and named it something else, and subsequent groups used
> >> > the
> >> > existing non-Ligurian name.
> >>
> >> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
> >> Any Ligurian etymology of Bodincus (be it from PIE *bheudh- 'bottom'
> >> or *bhedh- 'dig') is indistinguishable from a Celtic one (please don't
> >> reply that the first of these roots is scarcely represented in Insular
> >> Celtic lexicon, because the same holds true for a great part of
> >> river-names all over Celtic lands, whereas another great part of
> >> river-names in the same areas does exhibit Celtic lexical material, so
> >> every conclusion can be drawn: stratification of Celtic and non-Celtic
> >> but also, conversely, loss of lexical items in the subsequent history
> >> of Insular Celtic).
>
> > DGK:
> > I never bought into the 'fundo carens' explanation, a mere guess by the
> > ancients, and digging is not obviously involved. I consider it more
> > plausible that Bodincus meant 'Muddy', agreeing with "acque melmose del Po",
> > that the same stem occurs in the Bodensee, and that Celt. *bodjo- 'yellow'
> > originally meant 'mud-colored'; likewise Japygian or Messapic *badja-
> > borrowed into Latin as <badius> 'chestnut-colored, bay'. Of course, if you
> > dig mud, you could derive *bHodHo- 'something dug' from *bHedH-.
>
> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
> Celtic *bodjo- 'yellow' was Hubschmied's etymology too (do You accept
> Hubschmied's Celtic hypothesis for Bodincus and not for Padus?)
> >> A good Celtic etymology for Padus is Hubschmied's one (: Old NorseObviously I cannot prove that Padova (Etr. *Patava, whence Lat. Patavium) has the same base as Padus and Padu:sa, but the geographical agreement is striking, and suggests a sense for *pad- of 'broad, spreading, flat' applicable to the whole plain of Padania, its principal river, and its principal inland settlement.
> >> hvatr 'swift', Pokorny 636), in my opinion the best one among many
> >> proposals that have been made. Quite surely we don't agree on any of
> >> these etymologies, but this can be another thread, the point is again
> >> on the very existence of more than one name for the same river.
>
> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>
> > DGK:
> > "Good"? Semantically inappropriate and anachronistic. The lower Po is
> > broad and slow. Moreover, Lat. Patavium 'Padua' with its -t- must have come
> > through archaic Etruscan, and the Etruscans had colonized this area BEFORE
> > the Gauls swept through the passes and drove them out. No etymology for
> > Padus is better than a forced one.
>
> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
> Pace Battisti and Alessio, Padua has nothing to do with Po (its
> rivers don't flow into the Po nor did they flow into it even in
> Antiquity) and therefore no privilege on its etymology.
> I frankly don't understand Your argument. In Your opinion, Padua's
> name has come to Latin through Etruscans (possible), Etruscans
> colonized the lower basin of the Po before than the Transalpine Gauls
> Boians and Lingones (sure), and then? What has that to do with Padus?
> Following Your argument, one should think that the Etruscans haveI do not know what kind of name Padus is, and your P-Celtic citation is unconvincing, so I am looking elsewhere.
> taught their Celtic followers a pronounciation */phate/ or the like,
> and since no other form than Padus (or anything that would have been
> latinized as such) seems to be attested in Cisalpine Gaul for the
> river the Romans called Padus, this would imply (in Your scheme) that
> the Gaulish invaders learnt its name from a non-Etruscan source, most
> probably their predecessors, the Insubrians. Where's the difference
> with Hubschmied's proposal? I suppose You mean Padus was a Venetic
> name, but there's no difference in chronology, unless You once again
> take as a fact what's still simply a conjecture of Yours - that the
> Insubrians came after the Etruscans.
> Sure, You say: "We know the Boians and the Lingones came after theA flooding river is noted for its power, not merely its speed. That is why the stock comparison is not with a bounding deer or rabbit, but a charging horse. See R.D. Blackmore, _Lorna Doone_, ch. I:
> Etruscans; therefore all the other Celts probably came after the
> Etruscans". This is denied by Livius (maybe Cato behind him), but in
> no case it's a fact. "We don't have any mention of Celts before the
> Etruscans" - but we don't have any mention of anyone, not even of
> Ligurians or, if all, of their non-Celticity. Since we don't have
> anything, we must rely on place-names and things like that. Therefore,
> anachronism is just the relationships between my hypothesis and Your
> model, so nothing strange and nothing new, we already knew this.
> As for semantics, I argue You have never had a bath in the Po during
> a flood (otherwise You wouldn't be discussing here). Please don't try
> to verify whether its waters are so slow as they are broad...
> >> > DGK:You tell me how many cities are named *Broadway, *Main, *High, *Plank, and the like after pre-existing local names for short stretches of major roads. Then explain the relevance of artificial roads in historical times to natural rivers in prehistoric times.
> >> > There is ABSOLUTELY NO GROUND for asserting that every stretch of a
> >> > river
> >> > had a different name. In fact, such an assumption flies in the face of
> >> > your
> >> > homogenist model. You envision uniform PIE-speakers settling (or being
> >> > divinely created) over a very large area, and since rivers serve as
> >> > routes
> >> > for travel, there is no basis whatever for a uniform stratum of speakers
> >> > to
> >> > assign multiple names. The only reason for multiple naming is
> >> > ethnolinguistic heterogeneity, which your model denies for pre-Roman
> >> > times,
> >> > although you are willing to admit enclaves of conservatism to explain
> >> > Porcobera and the Plinii. Thus your model should yield only such
> >> > variants
> >> > as the Duero/Douro. It cannot account for Bodincus/Padus and the like.
> >> >
> >>
> >> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
> >>
> >> You are mixing two arguments. If we discuss of multiple naming of
> >> different stretches, a very good reason for it is the need of
> >> distinguishing such stretches, just like different stretches of one
> >> and the same street bear different names (even at one or two km
> >> distance) according to the people who dwell or work along it or to
> >> other features.
>
> > DGK:
> > That is not how streets (or rivers) acquire multiple names.
>
> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>
> Simply drive along the Via Aemilia, vilage after village, and then
> tell me how many names it has. Same for the Aurelia and so on.
> >> When You refer to ethnolinguistic heterogeneity, You are indeedI mean I would like to see better arguments than just-so stories. By the way, those invasions must have started back in the 5th c., since the Senones were strong enough to sack Rome in 386 (traditionally 390, but Toynbee argued persuasively for the later date, attributing the discrepancy to spurious "dictator years" in the annals).
> >> recalling instances like Duero/Douro (different phonological outputs
> >> from the same name), although in any case inside a common genealogical
> >> origin (like the Porcoberans and the Plinys on one side and the [rest
> >> of] Cisalpine Celts on the other side), while - as You have written -
> >> a name for the upper course and another one for the lower course of
> >> the same river are exactly what is needed in order to refer, in one
> >> and the same community, to such different parts.
>
> > DGK:
> > Wrong. Adjectives fulfill this need.
>
> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
> Your mind is a very exclusive one. If a Celtic tribe invaded
> Cisalpine Gaul in the 4th c. BC(E), then no other Celts can have lived
> there before; if an ablaut grade of a specific root is attested in a
> language class, no other grades can survive in it for the same root;
> if adjectives fulfill the need of naming different parts, substantives
> have no place left. And You are so persuaded that find me wrong...
> Your argument: "if there's a hyperonymic word, its parts can only be
> named with hyponymic adjectives; if a substantive pops up, it must
> belong to another ethnic community". Do You really mean that?
> >> Usually people colonize rivers' valleys upwards and they need a nameI cannot make heads or tails of your groszidg. theorie, so I must agree about the impasse. I am certainly willing to modify details (such as relocating the Celtic Urheimat to Galicia, and accepting multiple waves of Celtic immigration to Gallia Cisalpina), but the notion of one uniform pre-Roman stratum (even with conservative enclaves) makes no sense to me.
> >> for the lower part of the valley and another one for the upper part.
> >> Should You seriously argue that everything that has a hyperonymic name
> >> cannot have different hyponymic names for each part of it (unless by
> >> different ethnolinguistic communities), Your argument would be
> >> patently absurd, since the lowest limit for naming differentiation is
> >> at microscopical scale, not at a miles' size (otherwise one and the
> >> same family couldn't a have a name for the first floor of its home and
> >> a different one for the second floor - they should call everything
> >> simply "home"). I cannot believe You really mean that, I think You are
> >> joking.
>
> > DGK:
> > I think you sound like Heraclitus would, if practical jokers had forced him
> > into the cannabis tent with the Scythians. Abstruse philosophical
> > considerations of potential naming have no relevance to actual practice.
> > And again, adjectives (or prepositional phrases) easily satisfy the need for
> > subdividing 'home'.
>
> Bhrihskwobhloukstroy:
>
> So You weren't joking. What's, then, "Europe" other than Western
> Eurasia? Why should we keep calling "Asia" with its name instead of
> "Eastern Eurasia"? Wouldn't "Europe's Transgression" be an easier name
> for America, according to Your "actual practice"? And what about
> Australia? "South-East New Britain" would fit much better Your rule.
>
> But finally: this far-reaching discussion has started from an
> observation of mine regarding the presence of place-names with
> possible Celtic p-drop (like Cremona < *KremHo-ponah2) breaking any
> theoretical continuum between Ligurian and Orobian names with retained
> PIE /p/; this implied that rivers can have more than one name (and
> this is undeniably a fact, like Bodincus and Padus prove, so no more
> discussion is worthy on this point) and that, specifically, Cremona's
> river (possibly not yet the Po in Early Antiquity) was the original
> locus of the name *KremHo-ponah2: this is only a hypothesis just like
> Your opposite one - that Cremona is a secondary formation with
> retained PIE long /o:/ - and therefore I keep Your interpretation
> (which, anyway, was the traditional one and I already knew) as an
> alternative scenario, admittedly uncomfortable (like Co:mum < PIE
> *k'o:imo-m 'village(s)' or Krahe's and Pokorny's Arona = Lettish
> Aruona) to a pan-Celtic approach (instead of Celtic *kop-o-mo-m
> 'enclosure' // *bherg'h-o-mo-m 'defended high place' and respectively
> *h2arh3o-ponah2 'fields' water').
> This doesn't modify our discussion, because there are plenty of other
> Celtic names between Proper Liguria and the Orobian Alps and, on the
> other side, You inevitably label them as latecomers, just because the
> only invaders' affiliation we know from history is a Celtic one (and
> You would never admit that History could repeat herself).
> Our discussion has come to an impasse, because - this time it's
> primarily Your responsibility - You can't accept that the Celts had
> any other Urheimat than Asturias (although Your demonstration - which,
> as You well know, I completely accept - is at best of the same force
> as my own one regarding Cisalpine Gaul) and that they already dwelt
> South of the Alps before the 4th c. BC(E).
> Please note that we wouldn't agree even if I accepted the
> stratification approach, because the crucial point is the continuity
> of Cisalpine Celts from local PIE: if this were true (as I maintain),
> any other stratum could be equally old (Venetic; in my opinion
> Ligurian and Orobian) or - maybe more probably - younger (hypothetical
> non-Celtic innovations); only if it weren't true You could be right.