From: oalexandre
Message: 71769
Date: 2014-08-07
>> > --- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "stlatos" <stlatos@...> wrote:> >> > The start of the word shows the same variation seen in accipiter and acupedius, so an origin in 'water' or borrowing seems to gain no weight from it. All the same, even if you acknowledge the 3 are related, it doesn't completely rule out the possibility of borrowing if there was analogy among the three afterwards (as swift an. in the 3 divisions of the world).>> I regard <accipiter> as resulting from haplology of *accipitipitros 'falling headlong', which is what these birds do at great speed when attacking prey. Nothing to do with 'swift' or 'take' originally.>> > Then Hom. o:kupterós , K oxúpteros , next to oxúpous , L acupedius 'swift-footed' , would be a very great coincidence.>> Latin <acupedius> (pre-classical, only Paul. Fest.) has the expected zero-grade prefix *&3ku- (cf. <o:cior> 'swifter'). The problem I have with the 'swift-wing' explanation of <accipiter> is that it cannot explain the geminate. Crossing with <acceptor> is implausible. Most of the Romance languages have simply replaced <accipiter> with <acceptor>. Haplology of *accipitipitros (with obsolete *acceps replaced by <praeceps> in Cl. Lat.) avoids these problems.>In my opinion, Latin accipiter would be a nice example of the shift -kw- >-kk- of which are examples in Italoid (aka "Illyro-Lusitanian") and Celtic and which I call "Kilday's Law" (in despite it isn't a "sound law" in the traditional sense) after our friend DGK.The lexeme *akw-, whose original meaning can be reconstructed as 'swift', is the very same from which Latin aqua 'water' and Germanic *axwō 'river' derive. This secondary meaning is also found in the Old European Hydronymy (OEH). As it happens, the relationship between *akw- and *ōk´u- can't be properly explained by the std PIE theory.