Re: Lat. gladius and Sorothaptic

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Tavi" <oalexandre@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Bhrihskwobhloukstroy
> <bhrihstlobhrouzghdhroy@> wrote:
> >
> > > As I mentioned before, Coromines' "Sorothaptic" is roughly the same
> > > language than Villar's "Italoid" and DGK's "Illyro-Lusitanian". It's
> > > located somewhere between Baltic and Italic in the IE dialectal
> cloud.
> >
> > Yes, I quite well knew that; still it's not clear to me whether */k/ >
> > /g/ is allegedly Sorothaptic or else, according to Corominas
> >
> 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.

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.

The immediate pre-Latin substrate in most of northern Italy was Gaulish, but this language had not been established here as long as it had been in central Gaul. Milan itself was established by Gauls, but the pre-Gaulish substrate in NW Italy was Ligurian. The characteristic Lig. suffix *-asca: is frequent in the French departments east of the Rhône as well, indicating that here too Ligures preceded Gauls. The notice by Livy (5:34) makes the Bituriges the de facto leaders of the expanding Gauls during the reign of Tarquinius Priscus (early 6th cent. BCE). That is, Bourges was the effective capital of Gaul at the time, and this area had presumably been Gallicized in the 7th cent. or earlier. But east of the Rhône, Ligures kept their identity for several more centuries, and Gaulish settlement occurred at a much slower pace. Even today, Provence is a notoriously poor part of France, and incoming Gaulish settlers would be likely to grab lands west of the Rhône if they could. Indeed, the Provençal Gaulish tribal name Allobroges 'Otherlanders' suggests that for a considerable time most Gauls regarded Provence as 'the other land' across the Rhône, inhabited by poor and backward Ligures rather than Gauls. Nevertheless Gaulish settlers did trickle in to create a new tribe, the Allobroges, defined by geography instead of ancestry.

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-.

With this explanatory mechanism, I can dispense with my earlier makeshift, Late Greek *káttos as an intermediary between (Gallo-)Latin <cattus> and WRom *gattu-. Instead, I presume that *kattos m. and *katta: f. 'cat', whatever their ultimate source, were established in central Gaul, and introduced to Ligurian (and Liguro-Gallic) as *gattos and *gatta:, whence (several centuries later) Vulgar Latin *gattus and *gatta, at home in Provence, and otherwise spreading from NW Italy (perhaps on Genovese ships for rodent control), but not overcoming the /k/-forms entrenched in central Gaul. Late Latin <cattus> and <catta> in this view were borrowed (as literary terms) from central Gallo-Latin, and the epicene usage in Baruch 6:21 might not be genuinely archaic, but simply analogical after the behavior of <damma> 'fallow deer'.

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. The latter is derived from PIE *k^leu- and presumably meant something like 'praiseworthiness, laudability', with Gaul. *-ow- < *-ew- regularly. Both words go together as part of the warrior's lexicon. To undergo rhotacism ca. 350 BCE, the latter word must have been borrowed into Latin earlier, perhaps ca. 400. The sack of Rome by the Gauls, traditionally in 390 (but 386 according to Toynbee's analysis) is in accordance with such an estimate. The development *-owe- > -o:- occurs also in Latin <po:mum> 'fruit', which along with Umbrian <Puemune>, Vestinian <Poimuni-en> 'to Pomonus, god of fruit' requires a protoform *powemo-.

DGK