Re: Lat. gladius and Sorothaptic

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

>
> > Matasovic' thinks Latin gladius could be inherited, with *kl- > gl- as
> > in glo:ria < *klowesja:. He reconstructs a Celtic protoform *kladiwo- on
> > the basis of Old Irish claideb, with the Brittonic forms being loanwords
> > from Goidelic. A direct loanword from Gaulish into Latin can be also be
> > dismissed.
>
> Most Latin words continuing *kl- have cl-, so Matasovic' seems to be postulating an optional soundlaw, and we should always try to do better than that.
>

After reading his dictionary and having corresponded with him, I think cross-borrowing between Celtic and other IE languages isn't in Matasovic's theoric framework.

> With characteristic modesty, I submit that Ligurian substrate theory may be capable of explaining the voiced onset of <gladius>, <glo:ria>, and the West Romance *gattu- 'cat' which largely prevailed outside of central Gaul. My working hypothesis is that Gallia Propria was conquered by P-Celts, originating in N Iberia, who passed through Aquitania and poured across the Garonne in search of greener pastures. The pre-Celtic IE-speakers in S and SE Gaul were principally Ligures; those in NW Gaul were principally Veneti. To the north, the Belgae had superposed themselves upon the Veneti and Ligures. The eastern Belgae in NE Gaul were Gallicized in pre-Roman times; the western Belgae in Belgica Propria were not.
>

IMHO, etymological proposals should be largely independent of homeland theories. BTW, you seem to have forgotten Etruscan and its northern cousin Rhaetic.

> It is reasonable to suppose that here, to the west and south of the western Alps, Ligurian exerted a significant influence on the local Gaulish, which we might term Liguro-Gallic, just as we use the term Gallo-Latin to denote the Latin which was significantly influenced by Gaulish. Now, French <cabaret> and <cabriolet> (obviously not inherited the usual way from Latin) have been borrowed into Milanese as <gabaré> and <gabriolé>. French is noted for allowing very little aspiration with word-initial tenues. I hypothesize that the borrowing of Fr. /k/ as Milan. /g/ in word-initial position reflects a phonetic discrepancy going back to pre-Roman times. That is, central Gaulish dialects, which due to rapid conquest had undergone very little Ligurian (or Venetic) influence, allowed very little aspiration with word-initial tenues, particularly /k/. But Ligurian allowed considerable aspiration here, initial /k/ being sounded as [kH], so that Gaul. /k/, a pure [k] even initially, sounded more like /g/ than /k/ to Ligurian ears. Thus when the Ligures east of the Rhône and south of the Alps borrowed words from the first wave of Gaulish settlers, *k- became *g-, but of course native Ligurian words retained *k- (pronounced [kH-]). As more Gauls settled among these Ligures, effecting a slow conquest over several generations, their own Gaulish became Liguricized as Liguro-Gallic, with *k- in words corresponding to those in which Ligures had maintained native *k-, but *g- in words which Ligures had borrowed from Gaulish words with *k-.
>

Replacing Gaulish for Latin and Ligurian for Paleo-Basque wouldn't substantly alter the picture.

> I believe the same mechanism can explain Latin <gladius> 'sword' and <glo:ria> 'glory' as borrowings from Liguro-Gallic *gladjos and *glowesja: (representing Gaulish words in *k- borrowed into Ligurian with *g-). The former hardly requires comment, since *kladjo- is otherwise attested in Celtic.
>

As I mentioned before, the Celtic form is *kladiwo-, not **kladjo-. I also see no evidence of it in Gaulish.