Latin perfects and Fluent Etruscan in 30 days

[Gordon Selway]

At the risk of moving ever farther from the subject of this thread:

the significant point about 'clann' (to use modern spelling) is that it
corresponds with Welsh 'plant', though the latter has generated also a
singular form 'plentyn' with vowel affection alongside the acquisition of a
standard suffix to derive a singular form from a collective, cf 'adar'
[birds] -> 'aderyn' [a bird], whereas Gaelic has not.

Now, Gad. 'c' in such words as 'ca/', 'co\', 'ciod', 'cuin' (and
corresponding with Welsh 'pwy', &c) is for IE *'kw' (or however the current
fad for representing the sound goes), not 'k'.  There are some words in
Gad. which have 'c' where Britt. apparently had 'p', judging from the
modern descendents.  Eg 'corcor' [believed to be from Latin 'purpur' via
Britt.].  The hypothesis is that this occurred at a time when the
correspondence Gad. 'c' = Britt. 'p' was perceived by some Irish speakers
and was productive, and the rule for Celtic that IE *p -> 0 meant that
there was still no 'p' in our phonetic repertoire.  Somewhat later, 'p'
became a part of the sound repertory of Old Irish, and is found in
ecclesiastical borrowings (sometimes showing marked metathesis, and
sometimes having 'b' in some modern spellings, but dialects may not
recognise a voiced/voiceless distinction except by position): easpuig
(bishop); peacaidh (sin); aspal (apostle, but also 'abstol'); 'pog' (kiss:
'signum _pacis_') &c.

So, we assume that there was a raft of 'borrowings' at a period when we had
no 'p' but assumed that where 'p' occurred in Britt. we had 'c'.  We also
assume that this was before the arrival of (institutional) Xtianity with
Patrick in 432 CE - the words with specifically Christian usage came
with/after him, though there are variations in the Gad. names from
Patricius which include 'Cotruig' as well as 'Padruig'.  [But that may also
raise questions about the number of Patricks. the notion that the Romans
never came to Ireland, and the suppression of the discovery of a Roman
settlement in, I think, Meath, in recent years, among other things.]

At a pinch it may simply be that British and Irish languages were
sufficiently close to be perceived by their speakers as not that different,
ie as mutually comprehensible dialects but with regular differences, just
as there were no doubt regular differences between dialects within each
island.  'Borrowing' may therefore not be am facal deas - to visit the
'right/south' thread briefly - for these words which reached us from Latin
(or whatever) through Brittonic into Gadelic.

Not sure about the other possibility, that CC *klanta -> Britt. *planta.
But I do not recall ever seeing a proposal of such a change in
British/Welsh (and I cannot think of other correspondences between Gad.
(and *IE) 'c' and Britt./Welsh 'p'.  But I may be wrong.

Some of this reminds me of the tale of the anglophone who supposed that the
vocabulary of Gaelic was impoverished and was assured that it could be used
for any concept expressed in an English word.  So the anglophone asked if
there was a word in Gaelic for 'spaghetti', and received the reply
'certainly, but before I tell you what it is, would you tell me what the
English for 'spaghetti' is?

And we may have been playing with (other people's) words in a sub-Joycean
manner for longer than you might think: after all, 'sprig(s)/sprog(s)' are
familiar words for 'kid(s)', while 'scion' is more elevated.

wbw

Gordon
<gordonselway at gn.apc.org>

[But with lots of ancestors &c called McAllister, -Neill, -Duff-, -Brien.
&c - and written with a slight grin.]

At 3:06 pm 22/6/1999, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

>>I have never found the derivation of -cland- from Latin -planta- wholly
>>convincing for several reasons.  Unless the Latin word is itself a
>>Q-Celtic or Etruscan loaner, if this is apparently a case of the p/q
>>variable distribution, my suspicion is you'd expect to se a q- or a c-
>>form in Latin rather than a p-.

>	Or it conceivably Latin <planta> may have been a borrowing from
>Oscan or Gaulish, etc. used with a marked meaning, in which case any
>original *klanta would have disappeared. In Spanish, shoots off a plant
>(which are used to propagate) are called "hijos" [children], so it might work
>in a metaphorical sense.

>[snip]

>Rick Mc Callister
>W-1634
>Mississippi University for Women
>Columbus MS 39701