Re: bidet

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@...> wrote:
>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Tavi" <oalexandre@> wrote:
> >
> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "dgkilday57" <dgkilday57@> wrote:
> > >
> > > [...]
> > >
> > > Anyhow, whatever century it comes from, the fact remains that
> > <borondate> has initial bo-.
> > >
> > > > Comming from an earlier *p- as in poz, ponte, putre, palatu, pago,
> > etc.
> > >
> > > I doubt it, and <ponte> 'tufa' is from Latin <fontem>.
> > >
> > Actually 'baptismal font'. Romance /f-/ became regularly /p-/ as in fago
> > > pago.
>
> 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 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.

I must retract this notion of Basque <praka(k)> 'breech(es), trouser(s)' (Bisc., Guip.) being borrowed directly from Gaulish and undergoing anlaut-fortition. This mechanism fails to account for other Basque words in p- which must come either from Romance or earlier Latin words in b- or v-. Such are <palatu> 'stockade, enclosure' (Bisc. ~ Sp. <vallado>), <pasta> 'pack-saddle' (Guip. ~ Sp. <basto>), <pazi> 'caldron' (High Nav., Guip. ~ Sp. <bacina> 'poor-box'), and <perruca> 'wart' (Ronc. ~ Sp. <verruga>).

The unvoiced stops in <palatu> and <perruca> show that the borrowings predated intervocalic voicing in regional Romance. The ending of <pasta> suggests derivation from the plural of Lat. *bastum, the protoform of the 'pack-saddle' words, of obscure etymology, found mostly in southern France and northern Italy (REW 983). Hubschmid's derivation of <pazi> from Sp. <bacín> 'high chamber-pot' (itself borrowed from Catalan) is at odds with the early date of the others, and in my view is incorrect (Thes. Praerom. 2:101). Instead I regard <pazi> as extracted from *pazia interpreted as containing the article -a, and this probably from Vulg. Lat. *bacci:na, by-form to Late Lat. <bacchi:non> 'basin' (Greg. Tur.; written by Meyer-Lübke as <bacci:num> and considered probably African in origin, REW 866). Derivation from <bacchia> 'cup' (Isid.; written <baccea> and considered Arabic by M.-L., REW 863b) is much less likely.

The simplest way I see to explain these borrowings, including <praka(k)>, is to posit an interval of time during which the VL dialect spoken in the Basque Country had merged Class. Lat. b- [b-] and v- [w-] into a voiced fricative [B-]. Both this and the corresponding unvoiced fricative [f-] were heard by contemporary Basque-speakers as a long labial, which subsequently became fortis and has come into modern Basque as [p-]. Thus <pago> 'beech' and <ponte> 'tufa' (Lat. <fagum>, <fontem> 'spring') come from this same stratum, extending into the earliest Romance (hence not *pagu), well before medieval Basque acquired [f]. But words from CL and earlier VL (the early Christian loans) assign [p-] and [b-] along with [w-] and [f-] to the lenis labial, now [b-]. To reconcile this with the longa/brevis distinction for which I have argued previously, agreeing with -bb- > -p-, *-gg- > -k-, and less obviously *-dd- > -t- in Basque words, it seems necessary to assume that Basque had no initial [p-] until the time that <praka(k)> and the other words above were borrowed. Germanic names in which F- becomes Basque P- suggest that this occurred no later than the fifth century.

A doublet like <bortitz>/<portitz> from Lat. <fortis> in this view requires no intermediate language, merely an earlier and later stage of borrowing the same word.

DGK