Re: bidet

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

>
> Basque dialects also have <gipulla> and <dipula>. We are dealing with
> a culinary Wanderwort,
>
> > IMHO this is a cultural loanword from Latin/Romance like 'grape',
> > 'lentil', 'oats', 'hen/chicken' and many others imported by Paleo-Basque
> > speakers, mostly agro-pastoralists previously unacquainted with these
> > items.
>
> But the point I make is that given the variety of <kipula>, <gipulla>, <tipula>, <dipula>, we have several different borrowing routes, and it is rash to assert that palatalization of *k- occurred WITHIN any particular (Paleo-)Basque dialect.
>

But there're other examples of palatalization of velars, some of them already discussed here, e.g. fongo > onddo.

> > Interestingly, French névasse
> > 'slush' has a similar element -assa usually regarded as a despective suffix.
>
> Are you suggesting the French word might be a compound? That seems very unlikely.
>

As the native French word for 'snow' is neige, névasse must be a loanword, seemingly from Occitan nèu, nev- 'snow', although the word isn't attested there.

> > The thing is Mitxelena's reconstruction is mostly based on the evolution
> > of Latin loanwords in Basque such as causa > gauza.
>
> And Martinet's depends heavily on structuralist considerations, putting philosophy before facts. I really think he was at a loss to explain why fortes should have been lost in word-initial position (usually the most marked) and kept word-internally,
>

Contrarily to his original theory, Martinet's Law *did* also happened between vowels, although almost exclusively in velars. Also in words with two fortis stops, only the first underwent ML, and the second got lenied, as in e.g. taka > haga 'pole'.

> But philosophy aside, the most glaring defect of Martinet's treatment is his neglect of word-internal mediae geminatae, both in borrowings (abbas > Guip. apaiz, Lab. apez, Low Nav./Soul. aphez) and in compounds (*beg-buru 'eye-head' > *bebburu > bep(h)uru 'eyebrow'; *beg-gaitz 'eye-evil' > bekaitz 'envy').
>

Actually, these compounds have a combinatory form *bet- 'eye', where the velar got palatalized at word-final, apparently due to phonotatic reasons (neither labials nor velars were allowed at that position).

> My working hypothesis is that the rarity of word-initial tenues in Basque is not due to attrition by Martinet's Law (which indeed leaves inexplicable exceptions).
>

Which can be explained as borrowings from other (paleo-)dialects where Martinet's Law didn't happened at all.

> If Aquitanian is so heterogeneous, there is even LESS reason for
> making these equations.
>
> > Actually, the Aquitanian evidence is largely outnumbered by Basque
> > itself, where we can find doublets with and without Martinet's Law.
>
> Only for initial k- are these convincingly numerous. "Uhlenbeck nous offre une longue liste." For initial t- and p- only a handful of examples can be given, and the zero-initial forms may have arisen by analogy.
>

I disagree.

> Martinet feels compelled to cite highly speculative Vasco-Georgian correspondences as
> supplementary evidence. (Since you have hitched your Basque wagon to Starostin's
> Proto-NORTH Caucasian, I doubt you take Vasco-Kartvelian any more seriously than I do.)
>

Actually, we've got enough evidence from pre-Latin loanwords in Romance and dialectal Basque, as well as from Iberian.

> Basque <flakatu> 'to get weak' appears to come from Romance, and <farisau> 'Pharisee' already from Medieval Latin (with <ph-> pronounced [f-]). Since Bq. <praka(k)> 'breech(es)' is from Celtic,
>

I don't think this is a direct Celtic loanword but rather from Gallo-Latin.

> I do not rule out the same source for <pago> 'beech tree', specifically the Gaulish accusative
> *ba:gon. The Lat. acc. <fa:gum> should have given Bq. *pagu, and Romance either *fago or (if it > came through Gascon) *(h)ago.
>

Not really. Adaptation of /f-/ as /p-/ can be found in rather modern Romance loanwords such as Fernando > Pernando or francés 'French' > prantzes- (a compound element).