Re: Portuguese, Spanish bode "buck"

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

>
> --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Joao S. Lopes" <josimo70@> wrote:
> >
> > What's the etymology of Portuguese bode "he-buck"? It looks
> superficially to Germanic *bukka-, but Iberic Romance bode would imply
> something loke *botem, *butem- *Vpotem, *Vputem, where V= any vowel (cf.
> apotheca > bodega).
> >
> Possibly the Basque diminutive forms bitika, pit(i)ika, bitiñ,
> pitiña, pitina 'goat kid' would fit in.
>
> I think likely a link to NEC *bHe:mtts^y 'deer, mountain goat' (NCED
> 258), itself a relative of *bukk- (from an earlier *buku- by Kilday's
> Law) and related forms in Eastern IE and Altaic.
>

The gemination is much more likely due to Kluge's Law, since Avestan _bu:zo:_ 'he-goat' (Modern Persian _buz_ 'goat') and Armenian _buts_ 'lamb' suggest a root *bHeug^-. Germanic has both strong and weak nouns. The strong noun *bukka- (with expected /a/-umlaut also *bokka-) presumably continues *bHug^-no'-, while the weak noun underwent Kluge's assimilation in cases with zero-grade of the suffix (e.g. gen. pl. and dat. pl.) which was generalized to all the cases (i.e. *bHug^o':n, *bHug^o'n-, *bHug^n-'- would give expected Gmc. *boko:N, *bokan-, *bukk-, but levelling produced *bukko:N, *bukkan-, *bukk- and *-n- was then reintroduced to the gen. pl. *bukkno:N, dat. pl. *bukknumiz). In some Gmc. lgs. the *-u- from the wk. noun replaced umlauted *-o- in the st. noun.

My view on Kluge's Law (which I intend to justify in detail eventually) is that it occurred in Old Western IE, the common ancestor of Germanic, Celtic, Italic, Venetic, and Ligurian. The Sanskrit vocabulary word _bukkas_ 'he-goat' (not found in literature) is likely borrowed, by way of Iranian, from OWIE or one of its daughters. MnPers dial. _boc^a_ 'he-goat' is probably the same word, and suggests animal-trade between Proto-Iranians and one of the (O)WIE groups.

DGK