From: dgkilday57
Message: 71269
Date: 2013-07-18
>I just found out that Wolfgang Meid proposed the same etymology of Gmc. *paþa- 'Pfad', as a borrowing from Celt. *batos 'gangbar', years ago (Bemerkungen zum idg. Wortschatz des Germ., pp. 91-112 in: Das Germ. und die Rekonstruktion der idg. Grundsprache, hg. von J. Untermann - B. Brogyani, Amsterdam 1984).
> On 2008-12-30 21:33, dgkilday57 wrote:
>
> > One expects *pant- to be Grimm-shifted into *fanþ-, and
> > loss of the nasal in western WGmc would require compensation,
> > yielding *fa:þ-.
>
> There's no such thing at the WGmc. level. The loss of the nasal is
> restricted to the "North Sea" dialects, i.e. English, Frisian and Old
> Saxon, yielding *a~: (> Anglo-Frisian /o:/). In German, one would expect
> +<fand>. Pre-Gmc. *pant- is definitely a non-starter.
>
> > To me it makes more sense to assume a Gaulish *bat- as the source.
> > Pokorny assigns some Insular Celtic words pertaining to death, Old
> > Irish <baîd> 'dies', etc., to PIE *gwa:- (i.e. *gweH2-) 'to go, come'
> > on the grounds that dying is a going forward from the realm of
> > mortals. In English, <pass> is used in a similar sense. This
> > Insular specialization of the word was not necessarily shared with
> > Gaulish. The Greek adjective <batós> '(easily) passed, passable', if
> > it comes from *gwm.to- like the Latin participle <ventum>, would have
> > *banto- as the expected Gaulish cognate. However, a parallel
> > adjective *gwH2to- from *gweH2- not *gwem- would yield Gaul. *bato-.
> > I propose that this form in the sense 'passable' was used in Gaulish,
> > typically as a substantive with a noun 'way, road' understood, and
> > borrowed as a noun by pre-Grimm-shift Germanic-speakers along the
> > lower Rhine, where it regularly became WGmc *paþa-, and remained
> > restricted to regional usage.
>
> Interesting, and quite plausible. BTW, Matasovic' reconstructs a PCelt.
> *bato- (n.) 'death' (OIr. bath) from the root you mention above. If
> *gW&2-to-m developed semantically as 'passing' --> 'death', one can
> easily imagine *gW&2'-to-s 'that which is passed, way, road'. I think
> you've got a serious alternative for the Iranian etymology.