From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Tue Jan  2 04:16:27 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2001 04:16:27 -0000
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <TUE.2.JAN.2001.041627.0000.>

On 28 Dec 2000, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

>I looked in Buck and found

>	Latin catulus, catellus "puppy, cub" [Buck 1949: 180]

Various Latin poets use <catulus> to denote the young of pigs, lions,
wolves, and bears. "Puppy, young dog" is evidently a specialization.

>	Rumanian catel, Old Italian catello, Old French cael, obsolete
>French cheau [Buck 1949: 180]
>	Old Norse hadhna "kid", Russian kotot'sja, Polish kocic'sie "bear
>cub" [Buck 1949: 180]
>	Posner also cites Sardinian kateddu "little dog, puppy" < *ket- +
>-ellu [Posner 1996: 86]

This looks like a direct reflex of Lat. <catellus>, given that Sard.
-dd- from Lat. -ll- is regular.

>	which suggests the possibility of
>catulus/catellus > *katlu > *katju/kakju/kacju > *kac^o > cach-orro

>	although I imagine an /e/ would be expected, as in lacte- > leche

Span. -ech- regularly results from Lat. -act-, but other situations
producing Span. -ch- may leave a preceding /a/ unchanged, as <ancho> from
<amplus>, so *cach- <- *catlus <- <catulus> is reasonable. Does anyone know
why <leche> is feminine?

Velazquez (1959) gives 'cub, the young of a beast' as one sense of
<cachorro>, and <cachillada> 'litter, young brought forth by an animal at
once' appears to be based on the same root. As with <catulus>, both generic
and specific meanings are in use.

>	so maybe there was influence from Spanish cazar, Italian cacciare
>"to hunt" < Vulgar Latin *captiare "to hunt" < Latin capio "I take"

>and BIG MAYBE a methathesis (or some type of sequence in which the
>palatalization was scrambled) in Basque > txakur and BIGGER MAYBE a
>backformation to zakur--but I don't expect anyone to take my word without
>proof :>

>	I'd appreciate suggestions

Giovanni Alessio briefly discusses some of these words in his review of
Hubschmid's "Mediterrane Substrate" (St. Etr. XXIX, 1961, pp. 362-79).
Alessio rejects the connection between the Sardo-Corsican dog-terms and
Basque <zakur>, <txakur> on phonetic grounds. He suggests <zakur> might be
derived from a Ligurian form represented by Late Lat. <segusius>, Ital.
<segugio> 'bloodhound'. The vowel-alternation is parallel to Lat. <cerrus> :
Span. <carrasco> 'holm-oak'. Ligurians living near Tartessos are reported by
Steph. Byz. (s.v. Ligustine), and Thuc. (VI.2.2) says the Sicanians claimed
to be Iberians driven from the basin of the Sikanos (mod. Jucar?) by
Ligurians. Alessio thus hypothesizes that the Ligurians brought substratal
forms from the Balkans to southern Spain, whence the Iberians passed some of
them (perhaps including <zakur>) on to the Basques, giving Hubschmid and
others the false impression that Basque itself originated in the East.

>	Does anyone know how recent the terms are in the Balkan and
>Caucasus languages cited?
>	Is it possible that they all spring from a Slavic, Greek or Turkish
>term for a specific type of dog?

The modern Greek, Balkan, and Turkish terms probably come from Common Greek
(kuo:n) <zagraios> '(dog) useful for hunting'. The use of the Aeolic form,
rather than Attic *diagraios, probably reflects an Aeolic predilection for
hunting expressed by <phe:romane:s> 'mad about hunting' which is based on
Aeolic <phe:r> 'wild animal', not on the Attic form <the:r>.

My guess is the Sardo-Corsican terms are also from this Greek source. What
little I have found about Georg. <dzaghli> indicates that it simply means
'dog, Hund' without reference to hunting utility. Georgian dissimilates /r/
to /l/ when another /r/ precedes, but a single /r/ in a word appears to be
stable, so there is no evident basis for connecting <dzaghli> with the other
dog-terms.

DGK


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan  4 00:02:05 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 18:02:05 -0600
Subject: Greek Genitive Plural
Message-ID: <WED.3.JAN.2001.180205.0600.>

        The only reason I know of to think that /s/ once existed in the gen
plural of /a/-stems in Greek is that late PIE apparently did not tolerate
hiatus to the extent that /a-oon/ would mandate, at least not in V-stem
nouns.  Note that even in Sanskrit V-stems, where intrusive /s/ was not used
(not counting some pronouns), it was still evidently felt necessary to begin
the final syl with some consonant, in this case /n/.  It seems that
different branches adopted different solutions to the same perceived
problem.  So we have some indirect evidence of a phonotactic constraint.  I
have not bothered to check the rest of posited PIE morphology to see if this
constraint holds up across the board, though right off the top of my head I
cannot think of any evidence that it does not.

Dr. David L. White


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Jan  4 09:42:56 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 09:42:56 -0000
Subject: Gk gen plural
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.094256.0000.>

> Wouldn't they both end up the same? ...  I'm not sure in what
> circumstances in Greek you could expect to see a difference between the
> result of -aso:m and -aH2o:m.

This was my point.   Several authors confidently assert that the pronominal
ending -asom was adopted into Greek as well as into Latin, but I can see no
evidence for this assertion at all.

The only argument I can see is from probability:  Latin and Greek both
borrow the pronominal nominative plural, Latin/Italic borrows the pronominal
genitive plural, so perhaps Greek also did - but the books seem to make
statements more strongly than that.   (e.g. Szemerenyi p190 "Latin and Greek
... both from -a:som .. the pronominal ending."  Beekes, on the other hand,
avoids this error.)

I'm glad I haven't overlooked some obvious bit of evidence!

Peter


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan  4 00:34:38 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 18:34:38 -0600
Subject: Anthony as Greek?
Message-ID: <WED.3.JAN.2001.183438.0600.>

> Let me apologize, but it is escaping me why "Anthony" cannot come from Gk
> <anthos> or <antho:n>.   Aeschylus before 400BC already uses the term to
> also denote "pride", "honor" and "height of achievement".  It was also used
> to connote "brightness" or "brilliance."  Parallel the name with Gk
> <stephanos>, garland, and the fact that <Stephanus> appears as a Roman name
> at least by the first century BC.

> Is there a clear reason why Ant[h]onius cannot be Greek?

        Not an overwhelmingly clear reason, perhaps, but "Antonius", sans
"h", is a Roman family name presumably of some ancientry (since Roman
families were not made up anew, not that I ever heard of anyway).
"Stephanus", by contrast, is a given or personal name, so the analogy is not
quite exact.  But since Roman family names were (I vaguely recall) fairly
often of Etruscan origin, and the Etruscans probably came from the Eastern
Mediterranean, is seems within the range of possibility the Roman name could
ultimately go back to the same source, perhaps one of those Mediterranean
words like "olive".    I am not aware of any evidence that the word is
legitimately IE, though it may be.

Dr. David L. White


From BMScott at stratos.net  Thu Jan  4 20:18:47 2001
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 15:18:47 -0500
Subject: Anthony as Greek?
In-Reply-To: <a5.f804950.277e1c9a@aol.com>
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.151847.0500.>

On Friday, 29 December, 2000, at 11:58:02, Steve Long wrote:

SL> Let me apologize, but it is escaping me why "Anthony" cannot come
SL> from Gk <anthos> or <antho:n>.  [...] Is there a clear reason why
SL> Ant[h]onius cannot be Greek?

Roman (as distinct from medieval) <Antonius> and its derivatives
rather consistently appear with <t>, not the <th> that one would
expect in a borrowing of Gk <anth->. And it seems to be borrowed into
Greek with tau, not theta: according to Morlet (Les noms de personne
sur le territoire de l'ancienne Gaule du VIe au XIIe siècle, I:20a),
H. Dessau (Inscriptiones latinae selectae) cites two Greek
transcriptions of <Antoninus>, both with <'Anto:->, and Russian
<Anton(ij)> is apparently from Greek <Anto:nios>.

Brian M. Scott


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu Jan  4 00:56:57 2001
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 01:56:57 +0100
Subject: Meaning of "Goth"
In-Reply-To: <001701c0729f$e79a75c0$f16163d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.015657.0100.>

>         By the way (displaying my ignorance here), how does OHG "kans"
>appear as modern German "gans"?  Did only the /d/ -> /t/ part of this shift
>get fully established in standard German?

It's OHG, MHG, and NHG /gans/.
--
Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstraße 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From vistasjy at md.prestige.net  Thu Jan  4 04:07:54 2001
From: vistasjy at md.prestige.net (JohnYY)
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 23:07:54 -0500
Subject: The sun never sets ...
Message-ID: <WED.3.JAN.2001.230754.0500.>

We are discussing the linguistics of a mythic locale - I believe that
Bombay is no more, having been replaced officially by something like
"Mumbai".


From bronto at pobox.com  Thu Jan  4 04:41:57 2001
From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood)
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 20:41:57 -0800
Subject: II subgroups
Message-ID: <WED.3.JAN.2001.204157.0800.>

rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu wrote:
> Try:
> http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/didact/karten/indi/indicm.htm
> for a map and accompanying classifications, albeit in German.

Thanks!  Some of it is hard to read, but it'll do for most purposes.

--
Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan  4 19:18:46 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 20:18:46 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.201846.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, December 29, 2000 9:32 PM

> On 22 Dec 2000, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

>> And the (in origin Anatolian) Etruscans are linguistically second cousins of
>> the Italic speaking peoples, so the search for the roots of the latter day
>> Antonii (etc...) risks becoming cyclical ('cercle vicieux').

> This is the second time in a month you have represented this flimsy
> hypothesis of Etruscans coming from Anatolia as though it were an
> established fact. If you actually have any non-cyclical arguments
> (preferably linguistic) in favor of an eastern homeland for the Etruscans,
> perhaps you could post them here or on the other list.

> Doug Kilday

> [ Moderator's note:
>   The hypothesis that the Etruscans may have originated in Anatolia appears
>   to be supported by the presence on the island of Lemnos of a stele
>   inscribed in a language clearly related to but differing from the Etruscan
>   of Italy.
>   --rma ]

[Ed Selleslagh]

I thought this was something of majority view. Of course, final proof is hard
to get by, and one should keep an open mind. I'll give you some arguments, but
I don't intend to start a new thread on this.

The moderator's note is indeed the main argument. The stele found near Kaminia
on Lemnos (by G. Cousin and F. Dürrbach in 1885) dates from the 6th or 7th c.
B.C. The spelling differences (with Etruscan) can probably be explained by the
different alphabet and the phonetic evolution during several centuries of
separation (the date of arrival of the Etruscan's forefathers is rather
unclear: the estimates vary from the 13th to the 6th c. B.C. But they seem to
have arrived after the Umbrians had already established themselves in the later
Etruria: the river now called Ombrone seems to bear their name). Example: Etr.
<auils> - Lemn. <awidz> (probably meaning 'year(s)').

The general aspect of the language is flecting, with elements that recall (P)IE
(e.g. -c, Lat. -que, Greek -te, but that could be contamination), but more
similar to e.g. Lydian (-l, -s genitives), apparently with a strong initial
accent and pileups of consonants. In short: like a cousin rather than a
descendant of ('narrow') PIE.

A few years ago, M. Carrasquer made a tentative family tree I will send you
privately since this list doesn't allow it.

There are also non-linguistic arguments, like the bronze liver of Piacenza,
used as a model by Etruscan fortune tellers, which has N. Mesopotamian
characteristics. Or the considerable Greek content of Etruscan culture.

Although this isn't really an argument, I would like to add this:

It is possible that the Eneid (Aeneis) is at least in part based upon the
actual voyage of the Etruscans' forefathers to Italy, but that is only an
educated guess. Anyway, the route is about right, and the fantasy world it
depicts in places sounds like that of Jason's voyage to the Black Sea, or the
Odyssee. And its source is popular Roman tradition, that speaks of a landing of
a people on or near the Latium coast; Etruscan Caere (now Cerveteri) is not far
from Rome, and the earliest known rulers of Rome (itself an Etruscan name:
Ruma) were the Etruscan kings. So, it is entirely possible, even likely, that
the Romans confounded Etruscans and Italic peoples of the earliest period
covered by tradition.

All this means is that probably some people from the north-eastern
Mediterranean arrived in Latium or thereabout in or before the earliest days of
the Roman tradition.

Ed.


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Jan  4 16:23:26 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 16:23:26 -0000
Subject: minimal pairs
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.162326.0000.>

>...Etruscans coming from Anatolia

In addition to the traditions that Etruscans came from Anatolia, and Romans
came from Troy, there is a tradition that the Trojans themselves originated
in Italy!   Iasius was the brother of Dardanus, and both were believed to
have travelled from Italy to Samothrace, then to Troy, where they founded
the Trojan race.  You'll see a reference to it in Vergil, Aeneid 3:168.

Peter


From jozo.kapovic at zg.tel.hr  Thu Jan  4 13:33:49 2001
From: jozo.kapovic at zg.tel.hr (=?windows-1250?Q?Mate_Kapovi=E6?=)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 14:33:49 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.143349.0100.>

-----Original Message-----
From: X99Lynx at aol.com <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Date: 2001. siječanj 04 04:11

[Steve Long]
<Also, attested is "Gk <churra>, a call used by swineherds;
<churrabios>, swine-collar; <churrabos>, a bird."  Cf., Pol <kura>, hen.<

Polish kura is from all-Slavic *kur7 probably meaning "rooster, cock >
penis". It's probably of onomatopoeic origin, although there have been some
comparisons of Slavic *kur7va (< *kur7) "whore" with that eng. word - whore,
(Germ. Hüre) which is very doubtful.


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu Jan  4 15:56:29 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 10:56:29 EST
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro...
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.105629.EST.>

In a message dated 1/3/2001 9:37:58 PM, jozo.kapovic at zg.tel.hr writes:
<< it's hard to believe that *kotiti seN ("to bear cub (for some animals)") a
would have come from *kot7, because cats were not so (economically)
important. Some contamination of the roots has almost certainly been present.
>>

Just a note to point out again that the "semantic" end is not one that can be
handled so easily.  The "importance" of the cat, as well as how that word was
used to describe animals, is pretty much opaque to us.  There are dozens of
ways the term could have been transferred that are not within our modern
understanding.  It's pertinent to remember that for example the historic word
"cattle" in English can be traced with some precision not to livestock, but
to a legal term for personal property.  Its use to describe bovines is fairly
recent.  If the preliterate word "cat" referred to a function of an animal or
a matter of property or status or a place of origin, then we may be at a loss
to know how the transfer of meaning occurred.  Such uncertainty should
caution our willingness to eliminate paths of development on simple semantic
impressions.

Regards,
Steve Long


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan  4 19:28:26 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 20:28:26 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.202826.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2001 5:16 AM

> On 28 Dec 2000, Rick Mc Callister wrote:
[snip]

>>  Posner also cites Sardinian kateddu "little dog, puppy" < *ket- +
>> -ellu [Posner 1996: 86]

> This looks like a direct reflex of Lat. <catellus>, given that Sard.
> -dd- from Lat. -ll- is regular.

>> which suggests the possibility of
>> catulus/catellus > *katlu > *katju/kakju/kacju > *kac^o > cach-orro

>> although I imagine an /e/ would be expected, as in lacte- > leche

> Span. -ech- regularly results from Lat. -act-, but other situations
> producing Span. -ch- may leave a preceding /a/ unchanged, as <ancho> from
> <amplus>, so *cach- <- *catlus <- <catulus> is reasonable. Does anyone know
> why <leche> is feminine?

[Snip]

> DGK

[Ed Selleslagh]
Just a few thoughts. Don't crucify me for it.

Maybe we should write: *cacho < *catlo < catulum (acc.). The -orro goes back to
the Mediterranean infix -rr-, which expresses an exaggerated quality, and is
hence often augmentative/pejorative, cf. Cast. 'ventorro'. See the article "Los
vocablos en -rr- de la lengua sarda. Conexiones con la península ibérica",
by Mary Carmen Iribarren Argaiz, in Fontes Linguae Vasconum 76 (sept-dec 1997),
pp. 335-354.

Why is 'leche' feminine? In general, grammatical gender of certain classes of
Spanish words (e.g.-or) is rather unstable or variable, although in the latter
case different genders for the same word express different shades. Examples:

-To sailors 'la mar' is feminine, to the rest of us it is masculine 'el mar'.
In French 'la mer' is always feminine, and in Latin 'mare' is neuter.(Cf.
'ship' in English)

-'la calor' is unbearable, but 'el calor', the normal kind, may be pleasant (in
increasing order of unpleasantness: el calor, la calor, los calores, las
calores, according to Spanish friends of mine, and slightly tongue-in-cheek).
In French, 'la chaleur' is always feminine.

Maybe 'la leche' is just the natural thing to say, isn't it ?  I mean to people
who speak a language that seems to treat grammatical gender rather loosely, at
least historically (Maybe a Basque influence on early Castilian? Basque only
distinguishes animate/inanimate). Milk is strongly linked to female mammals. In
(modern) Greek they say 'thilikí' (<the:lyke:) for 'feminine gender', which
is derived from the word for 'nipple, breast'.

Ed.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Jan  4 19:41:17 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 14:41:17 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
In-Reply-To: <F212bkA5JIzpNcedZho0000d5e6@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.144117.0500.>

[snip]

[DGK]
> Does anyone know why <leche> is feminine?

	There is a group of Latin neuters that became feminine in Spanish &
Portuguese and masculine in French and Italian. I seem to remember Posner
saying something to the extent that [in some cases] Spanish evidently
derived feminine forms from the plurals while French and Italian derived
masculine forms from the singulars

[snip]

>Giovanni Alessio briefly discusses some of these words in his review of
>Hubschmid's "Mediterrane Substrate" (St. Etr. XXIX, 1961, pp. 362-79).
>Alessio rejects the connection between the Sardo-Corsican dog-terms and
>Basque <zakur>, <txakur> on phonetic grounds. He suggests <zakur> might be
>derived from a Ligurian form represented by Late Lat. <segusius>, Ital.
><segugio> 'bloodhound'.

	Corominas is locked up in the library for the next week or so, so I
hope you don't mind me asking how and if Spanish sabueso "bloodhound" is
derived from segusius. It looks possible but messy: I can see sabueso from
something like *sagu"eso < *sagOso- but it gives an open /O/, rather than
closed /o/ that would be expected from /u/
	Or is it directly from substrate?

>The vowel-alternation is parallel to Lat. <cerrus> :
>Span. <carrasco> 'holm-oak'. Ligurians living near Tartessos are reported by
>Steph. Byz. (s.v. Ligustine), and Thuc. (VI.2.2) says the Sicanians claimed
>to be Iberians driven from the basin of the Sikanos (mod. Jucar?) by
>Ligurians. Alessio thus hypothesizes that the Ligurians brought substratal
>forms from the Balkans to southern Spain, whence the Iberians passed some of
>them (perhaps including <zakur>) on to the Basques, giving Hubschmid and
>others the false impression that Basque itself originated in the East.

	So Alessio proposed the Lusitanians = "IE Ligurians" = Illyrians
hypothesis? By "IE Ligurians", I mean the non-Celtic, non-Italic IE
speakers of N Italy & S France
	I've also seen claims that the Sikani themselves were Ligurians
based on toponymic similarities between names in Sicily and Liguria

[snip]

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


From mcv at wxs.nl  Wed Jan 10 02:28:34 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 03:28:34 +0100
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
In-Reply-To: <F164okPcFOPgWqL0keH00002305@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.032834.0100.>

On Mon, 18 Dec 2000 03:30:12 -0000, "Douglas G Kilday"
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

Sorry for the late reply, I was away for three weeks.

>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (5 Dec 2000) wrote:

>>As I may have mentioned here earlier, I have been investigating the
>>possible ramifications of hypothesizing that not only *k/*g/*gh had
>>labialized (*kw/*gw/*ghw) and palatalized (*k^/*g^/*gh^) variants, but
>>that this was originally the case for *all* (pre-)PIE consonants.

>>One interesting possibility is **pw, which would have mostly merged
>>with *kw (for obvious reasons, a labialized labial would have been a
>>highly marked phoneme), but with *p in (pre-)Germanic.

>I'm not comfortable with double stars, but *pw in Early PIE which merged
>with *p in Pre-Germanic and with *kw in most other dialects  makes sense.

Thanks for the support :-).

>>This could be the case in the words "liver", "four", "-leven, -lve",
>> >"oven", "wolf" and some others ("leave", "sieve", etc.).

>I would add the tail-end of "five"; Goth. <fimf> suggests Early PIE *pempwe.

It would be a candidate, were it not that I rather like the idea of
*pen-kwe "...and five" (an etymology similar to that of "ampersand").

>>I'm not too pleased with "bane", however, being from the same root as
>> >*gunT- "Kampf, Schlacht", which means a putative **bhwen- (for PIE
>> >*ghwen) "to kill" is out of the question.  Not that it matters for
>> >judging the etymology by its own merits...

>I don't follow this.

I meant that *if* "bane" and <gunT-> are from the same root, it would
ruin my theory, which requires *bhw-words to be etymologically
distinct from *ghw-words (and similarly *pw- and *kw-words).

>In my opinion, PIE roots containing a labialized aspirate (traditional *gwh)
>which becomes Gmc. *w are most easily explained by assuming that the Early
>PIE root had *bhw. The phonetic realization in Early Gmc. was probably close
>to [vw], and this could plausibly have been reduced to [w]. In "mainstream"
>PIE, *bhw merged with *ghw. I hypothesize:

>  Lat. <formus>, Gk. <thermos>, Skt. <gharmas>, OE <wearm> <- *bhwermos
>  Lat. <nivis>, <ninguit>, Gk. <niphei>, OE <sni:wan> <- *sneibhw-
>  Lat. <nefrendes>, Gk. <nephroi>, ME <nere>, Ger. <Niere> <- *nebhwr-

>Early PIE *dhw may be represented in "deer", OE <de:or>, assuming this is
>connected with Lat. <ferus>, Gk. <the:r>. The latter has the Aeolic form
><phe:r> which suggests a PIE labialized aspirate, just as Aeol. <pisures>
>'four', <pempe> 'five' have <p> for Attic <t> where PIE had a labialized
>stop. I would refer "deer" to *dhwer- which became *ghwer- in "mainstream"
>PIE.

Interesting.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From hstahlke at gw.bsu.edu  Sun Jan  7 01:46:37 2001
From: hstahlke at gw.bsu.edu (Herb Stahlke)
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 20:46:37 -0500
Subject: Meaning of ``Goth``
Message-ID: <SAT.6.JAN.2001.204637.0500.>

I  don't know Germanic linguistics well, but could /kans/ be
something Notker would have written?

Herb Stahlke

<<< Georg at home.ivm.de  1/ 6  8:37p >>>
>         By the way (displaying my ignorance here), how does OHG
"kans"
>appear as modern German "gans"?  Did only the /d/ -> /t/ part of
this shift
>get fully established in standard German?

It's OHG, MHG, and NHG /gans/.
--
Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra_e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Tue Jan  9 05:27:55 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 00:27:55 EST
Subject: Early Goths as Drinkers
Message-ID: <TUE.9.JAN.2001.002755.EST.>

In a message dated 1/3/2001 7:43:25 PM, dlwhite at texas.net writes:
<< But since the "pour" word and the "god" word seem to be different
extensions of the same root, it is difficult to tell. >>

As I mentioned earlier, there is the Gothic verb <us-gutan> 'pour out' that
is at the prime basis of seeing "Goth" as stemming from a flooded area or a
different kind of pouring (in the works of such as the Swedish scholar
Thorsten Andersson > "both Goetar, Proto-Germanic *gautoz, and Goths, Gutar,
Proto-Germanic *gutaniz, are nomina agentis based on different ablaut grades
of the verb Sw. gjuta, Germ. gießen 'to pour', in the sense of 'to pour out
semen'....")

Because I have, perhaps for only personal reasons, problems with the Goths
naming themselves either the "flood people" or the "semen people,"  I've
tried to look again at the notion that the Gothic name is not a self-name and
therefore perhaps not Germanic in origin.   I have no idea how to judge how
much the name itself is younger than PIE or some intermediate European
proto-language.  But there are some paths that might make some sense in terms
of the historical and archaeological evidence.  As early as there is anything
involving the name or anything like it (Gotones, Gythones or even Getae), the
Greeks are the primary source, of course.

Looking at this "pour" idea as an origin brings up a number of different
possibilities.  The early Goths -- as they are understood now in the
Cernjachov culture-- are associated with a good deal of metalcraft and
religious practices.  So perhaps there's something to "pouring" metal or
burial mounds that works a little better than the ideas mentioned above.

But one of the paths that's interesting are Greek words that circle around
one or the other forms of the Goth name and that refer to making and drinking
alcohol.

<Che:o> was a main Greek verb for pour, taking many forms and meanings. In
the passive and aorist, it actually took the form <chut->, and we also have
the rather common participle, <chutos>, poured.

<ekchutos> meant 'poured forth, unconfined', but was also used as
'immoderate' and as the title of a classical treatise on wine making.
<oinochutos> was poured wine.   <oinodochutos>, a cupbearer.  <choe:>
specifically meant a pouring out of liquid, drink-offering, "especially made
to the dead or over their graves."

Much more specific about drinking is a string of fairly early words more
related to the shape and contents of the vessel than to its pour:

<ko:tho:n, -o:nos> was a Spartan drinking cup used by soldiers and made of
earthenware or metal.
<ko:tho:n> is defined in L&S as "a deep potation", but not of wine.
<ko:tho:nizo:> is defined as "make drunken" and, in the passive, as "drink
hard".
<keko:tho:nismenos>, inebriated.
<ko:tha> as a <pote:ria>, a drinking-cup.
<kuttoi> as "receptacles."
There is also the difficult-to-explain drinking and betting game of
<kottabus>.

Another group of words (most from at least the 3d century BC) that were
apparently unrelated are also interesting:
<zuthos> defined as "an Egyptian kind of beer, brewed with barley," but also
as "the beer of northern nations."
<zutas> was a brewer (cf., <zumoo:> leaven, ferment)
<zutopo:lis> a woman who sells beer
<zutopo:lion> a beer-shop
<zute:ra> a tax on beer

Is there any possibility that some of these Greek words made their way
northward or northeastward or vice versa or back and forth in the centuries
before the "Goths" appear on the scene?  Could any of this go back to an
ancestor language?  Were these people, later called the Goths, remembered
most in the Greek consciousness or their own as notable brewers or consumers
of such beverages?  On the theory that the exceptional product of a land
precedes knowledge of the people themselves?  Who showed up to brew this
"beer of the northern nations" in Greece at least by the 3d century BC?

And, of course, could any of this make linguistic sense?

Regards,
Steve Long


From sarima at friesen.net  Sun Jan  7 02:37:17 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 18:37:17 -0800
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
In-Reply-To: <00ae01c07684$91938a20$a006703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <SAT.6.JAN.2001.183717.0800.>

At 08:18 PM 1/4/01 +0100, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:
>... different alphabet and the phonetic evolution during several centuries of
>separation (the date of arrival of the Etruscan's forefathers is rather
>unclear: the estimates vary from the 13th to the 6th c. B.C. But they seem to
>have arrived after the Umbrians had already established themselves in the
>later
>Etruria: the river now called Ombrone seems to bear their name). Example: Etr.
><auils> - Lemn. <awidz> (probably meaning 'year(s)').

Hmm, is there any other evidence for the Umbrians preceding the Etruscans
in Etruria?  If this is really what happened it tends to remove the main
objections to the Villanova Culture being associated with Italic speakers.

[It also fits with my ideas about the origin of the italic peoples: if I am
right than the earlier dates for the arrival of the Etruscans would also be
ruled out, leaving circa 8th to 6th c. B.C.].

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From dlwhite at texas.net  Sun Jan  7 02:54:44 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 20:54:44 -0600
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <SAT.6.JAN.2001.205444.0600.>

        It should also be noted that the words "Trojan" and "Etruscan", not
to mention "Tuscan", "Tyrrhenian", and "Tursha" (an Egyptian term for "Sea
Peoples", who were clearly from the Eastern Med), are quite possibly variant
forms of a single word.  "Tarquin" and "Tarsus" might possibly be added to
the list.  But we've been through this before.
        Does anyone out there know where in the Aeneid Lemnos is mentioned?
I have not been able to find it.

Dr. David L. White


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sun Jan  7 03:38:13 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 21:38:13 -0600
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <SAT.6.JAN.2001.213813.0600.>

Dear Eduard and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Eduard Selleslagh" <edsel at glo.be>
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 1:18 PM

And its source is popular Roman tradition, that speaks of a landing of a people
on or near the Latium coast; Etruscan Caere (now Cerveteri) is not far from
Rome, and the earliest known rulers of Rome (itself an Etruscan name:  Ruma)
were the Etruscan kings. So, it is entirely possible, even likely, that the
Romans confounded Etruscans and Italic peoples of the earliest period covered
by tradition.

[PR]
Could you tell me the source for the opinion that Roma is derived from
Etruscan Ruma? And what is it supposed to mean?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit
ec at ec hecc, vindga meipi a netr allar nmo, geiri vnda~r . . . a ~eim
mei~i, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rstom renn." (Havamal 138)


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Sun Jan  7 15:59:44 2001
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 10:59:44 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <SUN.7.JAN.2001.105944.0500.>

Georgiev has a chapter on this topic in his An Introduction to the History of
the Indo-European Languages. Sofia:  Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. (1981).
My own knowledge of ths topic is rather weak.  Any comments on Georgiev's
proposals (which do look quite solid)?

----Original Message-----
From: Eduard Selleslagh <edsel at glo.be>
To: Indo-European Mailing List <Indo-European at xkl.com>
Date: Saturday, January 06, 2001 9:42 PM
Subject: Re: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)

[ moderator snip ]

[Ed Selleslagh]

I thought this was something of majority view. Of course, final proof is hard
to get by, and one should keep an open mind. I'll give you some arguments, but
I don't intend to start a new thread on this.

[ moderator snip ]


From stevegus at aye.net  Sun Jan  7 21:40:53 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 16:40:53 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <SUN.7.JAN.2001.164053.0500.>

Ed Selleslagh wrote:

<<The general aspect of the language is flecting, with elements that recall
(P)IE
(e.g. -c, Lat. -que, Greek -te, but that could be contamination), but more
similar to e.g. Lydian (-l, -s genitives), apparently with a strong initial
accent and pileups of consonants. In short: like a cousin rather than a
descendant of ('narrow') PIE.>>

There are a number of things about Etruscan that suggest some kind of
relationship to PIE.

There seems to be some kind of inherited pattern of ablaut in several
lexical items in Etruscan: e.g. nom. clan, gen. clens, dat. clensi, nom. pl.
clenar, "son."  The noun endings themselves (-s genitive, -si dative, -ar
[from *-az or *-ans?] plural) seem to strongly resemble what has happened in
other IE languages.  A locative case or derived adjective predictably ends
in -ti or -thi.

Etruscan feminines typically end in -i or -a, resembling the two thematic
feminine types in Sanskrit.  (Uni, Ati, Menrva, Klutmsta)

Some pronouns: 1st sing. nom. mi, acc. mini.  3d sing an (he, she), in (it).
"This" is ita or eta; also ica or eca.  Accusatives of these add -n.

Adjectives derived from nouns usually add -iu or -(e)na; e.g. the family
name of Lars Porsena, and such Etruscan-Latin names as Furius.

Verbs show an apparently consistent past in -ce: turce (he, she, it gave);
svalce (he, she, it lived).  A possible sigmatic aorist?  especially since
some historians of Romance have blamed the palatalisation of Latin 'c' on
the Etruscans.  Imperatives show either a naked stem (tur!) or the
ending -thi.

The numerals, as is well known, hardly look IE, but you do have: 7 semph,
and 9 nurph.  7 *sep-, *seb- seems to be common Mediterranean as well as IE.

I have wondered about whether the Etruscans are somehow related to the
proto-Germans.  Like the Germans who must have spoken PIE with a terrible
brogue, the Etruscans seem to have done great phonetic violence to Greek
words they imported.  Klytaimnestra = Clutmsta,  Herakles = Hercle,
Menelaos = Menle, Polydeuces = Pulutuk, Diomedes = Zimite.  These names also
make you wonder whether their script was somehow inadequately supplied with
vowels, or made heavy use of abbreviated forms.

Much of Etruscan inflection and derivation, in so far as we can figure it
out at this remove, looks like a well-worn IE language of relatively recent
date.  So do most of their pronouns and particles.  It's the Etruscan
vocabulary that no one has yet been able to figure.

--
    We will walk into the snow, and we will keep walking, until
    we reach the grey horizon.

    Ceterum censeo sedem Romanam esse delendam.


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Tue Jan  9 15:35:58 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 10:35:58 EST
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <TUE.9.JAN.2001.103558.EST.>

In a message dated 1/6/2001 9:22:03 PM, edsel at glo.be writes:
<< the date of arrival of the Etruscan's forefathers is rather unclear: the
estimates vary from the 13th to the 6th c. B.C.>>

Archaeologically, it seems that it is difficult to distinguish Etruscans in
terms of the surrounding Villanovan culture before the early 8th century.
Beginning at that time certain distinctive features -- many of them Asian --
begin to emerge that will mark Etruscan culture in later centuries, including
their unique grid-like urban system.   As far as consensus goes, most
historians would probably agree that "the Etruscans as we know them represent
a combination of elements from Asia Minor and local Villanovan, with a strong
infusion of Greek culture for good measure."

Long before the Lemnos inscription, of course, Herodotus had told us that the
Etruscans came from Lydia.

Regards,
Steve Long


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sun Jan  7 01:57:08 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 20:57:08 -0500
Subject: dulcis/lac?
In-Reply-To: <3A53FF15.678B05B9@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.6.JAN.2001.205708.0500.>

	I noticed that Buck [among others] suggests
Latin dulcis & Greek gluku/s < *dluk-
	I'm wondering if there's any possibility of
Latin lac, lact- & Greek gala, galakt- < *dlak-
	I've also seen Latin loquor linked to [something like] Gaelic tlu-,
and English talk

	thanx

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


From dlwhite at texas.net  Sun Jan  7 06:55:32 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 00:55:32 -0600
Subject: IE 'wolf'
Message-ID: <SUN.7.JAN.2001.005532.0600.>

        With regard to the 'wolf' thing a while back, where it was stated
that Latin "lupus" is borrowed from a /p/-dialect of Italic, Germanic "wolf"
and so on appear to be the expected Germanic cognates of Latin, "vulpes".
If this is so, then unless I am missing something (a very real possibility),
the /-p/ here is original, as Germanic /kw/ does not (to my knowledge)
change into either /p/ before the shift or /f/ after it.  It is generally
recognized (I think) that Latin "lupus" and "vulpes" are tabu variants of
the same word.  That the original ordering was /wl/ rather than /lu/ is
suggested by Sanskrit "vrka-" and Lithuanian (if memory serves) "vlka-",
which almost have to be the same word as Greek "luko-".   So it would seem
then that both 1) the ordering of /l/ and /w-u/ and 2) the choice of /p/ or
/kw/ as the final C were subject to variation that is the result of tabu
deformation, not sound change.  Unless it can be shown that forms with /kw/
clearly did come down into Latin, or that /p/ in such positions was, like
/f/ in "bufo", not the regular development, there is, as far as I can see,
little reason to insist that the Latin forms were borrowed from /p/-Italic.
        I say all this with very little confidence:  correct me if I am
wrong.

Dr. David L. White


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sun Jan  7 20:11:16 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 15:11:16 -0500
Subject: cat < ?
In-Reply-To: <3A53FF15.678B05B9@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <SUN.7.JAN.2001.151116.0500.>

cat seems to be one of the most problematic of all animal names

	Corominas says cattus "wildcat" was first documented in late Latin
4th c. and springs from an unknown source [Corominas 1980]
	Buck (1949: 182) goes back to Greek káttos, kátta, gáttos from an
unknown source
	He also gives Latvian kak'is, kak'e "cat" [Buck 1949: 182]
	Entwistle (1936: 40-41) derives it from Gaulish cattu
	Gamkrelidze & Ivanov (1995: 515) (English trans.) offer
Indo-European *khath "cat", possibly from Nubian kadi:s
	G & I also list Arabic kitt, Aramaic katta, Georgian katla, Laz
k'at'u, Kabardian gedu, Dido gedu, Avar keto, Turkish kedi [Gamkrelidze &
Ivanov 1995: 515]

	General lore has domestic cats originating in North Africa; but
wildcats are almost universal.
	So is IE *khath "cat" plausible?
	My problem is that the cat words all look too much alike.
	I'm trying to imagine how a Nubian word would have made it into
early IE. Is the ancient Berber/Libyan word known? Egyptian was something
like miu, wasn't it?
	If it's from Gaulish; could it be derived from catu- "fighter"? -I
remenber seeing a similar sounding word meaning "stealthy" or whatnot. Both
of these describe tomcats pretty well.

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


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Mon Jan  8 07:08:15 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 02:08:15 EST
Subject: Anthony as Greek?
Message-ID: <MON.8.JAN.2001.020815.EST.>

In a message dated 1/6/2001 7:56:06 PM, BMScott at stratos.net writes:
<< Roman (as distinct from medieval) <Antonius> and its derivatives rather
consistently appear with <t>, not the <th> that one would expect in a
borrowing of Gk <anth->.>>

But that may be a function of how early the name entered Latin.   Early names
that show Greek origins do not necessarily observe the later Roman respect
for Greek spellings, e.g., the volcanic <Aetna> from the Gr <aitho:n, aithe:>
'burning', but see the Latin <Aethon> for later imported names from Classical
Greek mythology.  Other examples might include Latin <antelii> a word for the
ancient custom of placing images near the doorway of homes, from the Gr
<anthe:lioi>; Latin <tus, ture>, incense, from the Gr <thuos>; and even
possibly a name for the Etruscans themselves, <Tusci> which is also attested
as <Thusci>.

One of the things it is easy to forget is that the Greeks were in contact
with both Rome and the Etruscans at an extremely early date.  A major Greek
colony near Naples, Pithekoussai, was founded about 750 BC.  And among the
earliest "Roman" burials on Esquiline hill, numbers of Corinthian "olpe" urns
have been found, including one that is inscribed with apparently the Greek
name "Ktektos" dating from about 725BC.  Such contact precedes by many
centuries the first appearance of the name Anthony.

Whether through the Etruscans or directly, there is clear evidence that the
Greeks were there not long after the iron age started and had a considerable
technical and cultural influence on the region before we have any evidence of
Latin literacy.

<Anthoun->, the present participle of <antheo:>, flourishing, blossoming,
bright, etc. (or perhaps just flower growering) could have entered Latin
early enough to have been adapted to the Latin sound preferences, and before
the Romans had become careful about their borrowings from Greek.  The absence
of a clear alternative origin might suggest that a Greek origin shouldn't be
dismissed too confidently on the basis of /t/ versus /th/ distinction that
early Romans did not always observe well themselves. (Cf., <Atys/Athys>)

<<And it seems to be borrowed into Greek with tau, not theta: according to
Morlet (Les noms de personne sur le territoire de l'ancienne Gaule du VIe au
XIIe siècle, I:20a), H. Dessau (Inscriptiones latinae selectae) cites two
Greek transcriptions of <Antoninus>, both with <'Anto:-> >>

Would it be expected that the Greeks would recovert a family name back to a
Greek pronunciation or written form once it became an established
centuries-old Roman name?  It would be like the French translating back an
English family name like Williams into its French original.  This would be
unusual in any circumstance, but especially in the case of imperial Romans
names.

Regards,
Steve Long


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Sun Jan  7 14:04:27 2001
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 09:04:27 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro...
Message-ID: <SUN.7.JAN.2001.090427.0500.>

>The word shchenit'sja means 'to bear cub; to cub, to whelp' in Russian
>(shchenok 'dog cub'),
>and Russian kotit'sja means 'to bear kitten (about cats) or other youngling
>(about small carnivorous mammal - ferret etc)'.
>It is a general model for creation of words that mean 'to bear younglings'.
>The Russian telit'sja means 'to bear calve (of cattle, deer etc.)'
>(telionok 'calf'),
>zherebit'sja 'to bear colt' (zherebenok 'colt'),
>yagnit'sja 'to bear lamb' (yagnionok 'lamb')...

>The were wild cats (Felis silvestris) in East European forests.

And there still are in the Scottish Highlands

Robert Orr


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun Jan  7 16:20:10 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 16:20:10 -0000
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <SUN.7.JAN.2001.162010.0000.>

> There is a group of Latin neuters that became feminine in Spanish &
> Portuguese and masculine in French and Italian. I seem to remember Posner
> saying something to the extent that [in some cases] Spanish evidently
> derived feminine forms from the plurals while French and Italian derived
> masculine forms from the singulars

My copy of Posner's The Romance Languages has a mention of la leche on page
135, but no discussion of this process of origin.  She does, however,
mention that some Latin neuters "hesitated in gender" even within Latin -
and this is probably the origin of divergent outcomes.

Peter


From dalazal at hotmail.com  Thu Jan 11 01:38:40 2001
From: dalazal at hotmail.com (Diogo Almeida)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 20:38:40 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.203840.0500.>

>From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
>Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 14:41:17 -0500

>[DGK]
> > Does anyone know why <leche> is feminine?
>
>	There is a group of Latin neuters that became feminine in Spanish &
>Portuguese and masculine in French and Italian.

But "leite" (portuguese for "leche") is masculine ("o leite"), and I'm
pretty sure that it is masculine both in Brazilian and European Portuguese.


From bronto at pobox.com  Sun Jan  7 02:22:38 2001
From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood)
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 18:22:38 -0800
Subject: The sun never sets ...
Message-ID: <SAT.6.JAN.2001.182238.0800.>

JohnYY wrote:
> We are discussing the linguistics of a mythic locale - I believe
> that Bombay is no more, having been replaced officially by something
> like "Mumbai".

In that case I'll settle for an old map!  ;)

--
Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From douglas at nb.net  Wed Jan 10 22:42:10 2001
From: douglas at nb.net (Douglas G. Wilson)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 17:42:10 -0500
Subject: Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <000b01c07855$31861d00$226163d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.174210.0500.>

>         Does anyone out there know where in the Aeneid Lemnos is mentioned?
>I have not been able to find it.

A tangential reference, I think, Aeneid 8.454:

"Haec pater Aeoliis properat dum Lemnius oris, ..."

-- Doug Wilson


From ipse at hevanet.com  Thu Jan 11 01:36:43 2001
From: ipse at hevanet.com (ipse)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 17:36:43 -0800
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.173643.0800.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "David L. White" <dlwhite at texas.net>
Subject: Re: Etruscans

> Does anyone out there know where
> in the Aeneid Lemnos is mentioned?

Aeneid VIII. 454
Haec pater Aeoliis properat dum Lemnius oris,
is the only verse which contains the stem 'Lemn-'.

David Jensen


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 11 11:23:37 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 12:23:37 +0100
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.122337.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "David L. White" <dlwhite at texas.net>
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 3:54 AM

>         It should also be noted that the words "Trojan" and "Etruscan", not
> to mention "Tuscan", "Tyrrhenian", and "Tursha" (an Egyptian term for "Sea
> Peoples", who were clearly from the Eastern Med), are quite possibly variant
> forms of a single word.  "Tarquin" and "Tarsus" might possibly be added to
> the list.  But we've been through this before.
>         Does anyone out there know where in the Aeneid Lemnos is mentioned?
> I have not been able to find it.
>
> Dr. David L. White

[Ed]
As far as I remember, it isn't, although it may be hidden under some mythical
place's name. Note that this is not necessary, if Aeneas belonged to another
group that sailed to other places.


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan 11 02:05:34 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 20:05:34 -0600
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.200534.0600.>

> Like the Germans who must have spoken PIE with a terrible
> brogue, the Etruscans seem to have done great phonetic violence to Greek
> words they imported.  Klytaimnestra = Clutmsta,  Herakles = Hercle,
> Menelaos = Menle, Polydeuces = Pulutuk, Diomedes = Zimite.

        Also "Aplu".  But are these names really Greek, in the sense of
having IE etymologies?  I have heard that of the Greek gods only Zeus is IE.
Perhaps we have (in some cases) not mangling but borrowing from a common
source.

Dr. David L. White


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 11 11:00:28 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 12:00:28 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.120028.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 3:37 AM

> At 08:18 PM 1/4/01 +0100, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

>> ... different alphabet and the phonetic evolution during several centuries
>> of separation (the date of arrival of the Etruscan's forefathers is rather
>> unclear: the estimates vary from the 13th to the 6th c. B.C. But they seem
>> to have arrived after the Umbrians had already established themselves in the
>> later Etruria: the river now called Ombrone seems to bear their name).
>> Example: Etr.  <auils> - Lemn. <awidz> (probably meaning 'year(s)').

> Hmm, is there any other evidence for the Umbrians preceding the Etruscans
> in Etruria?  If this is really what happened it tends to remove the main
> objections to the Villanova Culture being associated with Italic speakers.

> [It also fits with my ideas about the origin of the italic peoples: if I am
> right than the earlier dates for the arrival of the Etruscans would also be
> ruled out, leaving circa 8th to 6th c. B.C.].

[Ed]
Note that I wrote "it SEEMS..". I am not aware of other arguments.

As a non-specialist, I am a bit surprised by your late date for the arrival of
the Umbrians (P-Italic).


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 11 11:31:23 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 12:31:23 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.123123.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <colkitto at sprint.ca>
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 4:59 PM

> Georgiev has a chapter on this topic in his An Introduction to the History of
> the Indo-European Languages. Sofia:  Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. (1981).
> My own knowledge of this topic is rather weak.  Any comments on Georgiev's
> proposals (which do look quite solid)?

[Ed]
I haven't read that. Actually I have abandoned the field (of Etruscan) years
ago for the ancient non-IE languages of the Iberian peninsula.


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 11 11:07:55 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 12:07:55 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.120755.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "proto-language" <proto-language at email.msn.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 4:38 AM

[ moderator snip ]

> [PR]
> Could you tell me the source for the opinion that Roma is derived from
> Etruscan Ruma? And what is it supposed to mean?

> Pat

[Ed]

I read it in Heurgeon and maybe somewhere in Dumézil. Actually they mention
<Rumach> meaning 'from Rome, Roman', cf. Anatolian <Sfardak>, 'from Sardes'.
Apparently the meaning is unknown, but that opinion is possibly dated.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Jan 11 20:43:55 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 15:43:55 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
In-Reply-To: <009401c078f2$839e9200$1fc407c6@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.154355.0500.>

[snip]
	Looking at Adolfo Zavaroni's etymologies of words of putative IE
origin in Etruscan, you could easily come to that conclusion. Etruscan
seems to have stressed the first syllable and given secondary stress to the
3rd syllable. It had /a, e, i, u/ in alphabet but I'd guess that
probably/possibly had a schwa. It also seems to have often aspirated and/or
fricativized stops /p/ > /ph, f/ > /h/; /k/ > /kh, x/ > /h/ --at least in
its later stages.
	I'd like to see some sort of chronology regarding
aspiration/friciativization or if it was just a case of better writing
conventions

>I have wondered about whether the Etruscans are somehow related to the
>proto-Germans.  Like the Germans who must have spoken PIE with a terrible
>brogue, the Etruscans seem to have done great phonetic violence to Greek
>words they imported.  Klytaimnestra = Clutmsta,  Herakles = Hercle,
>Menelaos = Menle, Polydeuces = Pulutuk, Diomedes = Zimite.  These names also
>make you wonder whether their script was somehow inadequately supplied with
>vowels, or made heavy use of abbreviated forms.

>Much of Etruscan inflection and derivation, in so far as we can figure it
>out at this remove, looks like a well-worn IE language of relatively recent
>date.  So do most of their pronouns and particles.  It's the Etruscan
>vocabulary that no one has yet been able to figure.

[ moderator snip ]

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


From dlwhite at texas.net  Wed Jan 10 23:04:55 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 17:04:55 -0600
Subject: Early Goths as Drinkers
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.170455.0600.>

> As I mentioned earlier, there is the Gothic verb <us-gutan> 'pour out' that
> is at the prime basis of seeing "Goth" as stemming from a flooded area or a
> different kind of pouring (in the works of such as the Swedish scholar
> Thorsten Andersson > "both Goetar, Proto-Germanic *gautoz, and Goths, Gutar,
> Proto-Germanic *gutaniz, are nomina agentis based on different ablaut grades
> of the verb Sw. gjuta, Germ. gießen 'to pour', in the sense of 'to pour out
> semen'....")

        That is more or less what I was suggesting earlier.

> Because I have, perhaps for only personal reasons, problems with the Goths
> naming themselves either the "flood people" or the "semen people,"  I've
> tried to look again at the notion that the Gothic name is not a self-name and
> therefore perhaps not Germanic in origin

        It could be an "other-name" (if that is the opposite of "self-name")
from other Germans.  If "pour" had in some dialects come to mean 'drink'
(perhaps jocularly in the beginning, and/or end), then I suppose it's
conceivable that the name meant "drunks" or "drinkers", though I wouldn't
bet on it.

Dr. David L. White


From connolly at memphis.edu  Wed Jan 10 22:26:38 2001
From: connolly at memphis.edu (Leo A. Connolly)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 22:26:38 +0000
Subject: Meaning of ``Goth``
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.222638.0000.>

Herb Stahlke wrote:

> I  don't know Germanic linguistics well, but could /kans/ be
> something Notker would have written?

> Herb Stahlke

> <<< Georg at home.ivm.de  1/ 6  8:37p >>>

>> By the way (displaying my ignorance here), how does OHG "kans" appear as
>> modern German "gans"?  Did only the /d/ -> /t/ part of this shift get fully
>> established in standard German?

Stefan Georg replied:

> It's OHG, MHG, and NHG /gans/.

True enough.  But initial /g/ is often written <k> or <c> the Bavarian
and Alemannic dialects of OHG.  In fact, 19th century linguists seemed
to regard this as the "proper" development -- they called it
"strengalthochdeutsch".

In the systems of these dialects, Gmc. /k-/ had become affricate [kx-],
usually written <ch> or <kh>.  Gmc. /g/ was the only other velar stop,
and in initial position was surely voiceless all or most of the time
and, apparently, sometimes fortis [k], to judge from modern Swiss
dialects.  Notker would have written <kans> at the start of a sentence,
or if the preceding word ended with an obstruent, apparently indicating
the fortis [k].  He wrote <g> after vowels, nasals, and resonants.  This
is part of the famous Notker'sche Anlautsgesetz.  Initial [kx] is now
preserved only in certain Austrian dialects; most  Alemannic, Bavarian
and Austrian dialects have restored [kh], while Swiss dialects have [x].

Gmc. /t/ appears as <z> in OHG, /d/ as <t> in Alemannic, Bavarian, and
East Franconian (and in the modern standard language), and /T/ appears
as /d/, which Notker writes <t> after obstruents.

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From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan 11 03:28:41 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 21:28:41 -0600
Subject: High German /k/ for /g/
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.212841.0600.>

>> By the way (displaying my ignorance here), how does OHG "kans" appear as
>> modern German "gans"?  Did only the /d/ -> /t/ part of this shift get fully
>> established in standard German?

> It's OHG, MHG, and NHG /gans/.
> --

        Upon examination ... Old High German is a rather diverse group of
dialects, and in early Allemanic and Bavarian, initial "k" corresponding to
modern English and German /g/ is more or less regular, or at least
predominant.

Dr. David L. White


From sonno3 at hotmail.com  Thu Jan 11 01:26:24 2001
From: sonno3 at hotmail.com (Christopher Gwinn)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 20:26:24 -0500
Subject: IE 'wolf'
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.202624.0500.>

>         With regard to the 'wolf' thing a while back, where it was stated
> that Latin "lupus" is borrowed from a /p/-dialect of Italic, Germanic "wolf"
> and so on appear to be the expected Germanic cognates of Latin, "vulpes".
> If this is so, then unless I am missing something (a very real possibility),
> the /-p/ here is original, as Germanic /kw/ does not (to my knowledge)
> change into either /p/ before the shift or /f/ after it.

What are to make of Gaulish Louernios (*loup-ern-io), "fox," which may stem
from the same root as Indic lopasa, Avestan raopi ? These words are related
to Latin lupus in Pokorny.

-Chris Gwinn


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan 11 01:59:59 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 19:59:59 -0600
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.195959.0600.>

> My problem is that the cat words all look too much alike.

        That is probably because they are all fairly recent loan-words.  I
seem to recall that (apart from /miu/), there are only two cat-words in
general use in European languages, which might be called the /k-/ word and
the /p-/word (both of these exist in English).  However, though Welsh has
/cath/, Irish has (as I recall, I have no decent dictionary here) some
version of the /p-/ word, so we cannot even reconstruct a Common Celtic word
for 'cat'.   The fact(?) that Irish has a /p-/ word for 'cat' of course
means that the word cannot be old there.

Dr. David L. White


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu Jan 11 07:00:53 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 02:00:53 EST
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.020053.EST.>

In a message dated 1/10/2001 7:24:36 PM, rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:
<< Corominas says cattus "wildcat" was first documented in late Latin 4th c.
and springs from an unknown source [Corominas 1980] Buck (1949: 182) goes
back to Greek káttos, kátta, gáttos from an unknown source>>

The earlier term for cats in Greek was <ailouros> or <aielouro>.  Herodotus
describes them in Egypt in a way that seems to indicate that domestic cats
were not very familiar to his readers.  Aristophanes mentions cats as part of
a grabbag of wild game that is to be eaten.

<ailouros> might be some kind of a contraction, <Aiguptos?> + <ouros>,
guardian.  Or a compound, <haili-> <ouros>, ship watcher.  (A study in the
'70's showed that the spread of the currently dominant feral breed of
domestic cat, the blotched tabby, can be traced back to European sea port
towns.  Associating cats with ships might be the first impression -
especially since they served the purpose of protecting grain cargoes against
mice and rats.)  <ouros> is also a word in Greek refering to Egyptian desert
country and the Libyan desert wildcat is very closely related to the European
domestic cat.  <ouros> also brings up the Lynx and <lungourion>, a kind of
amber, the word derived by both Latins and Greeks "from lunx, ouron, and
supposed to be the coagulated urine of the lynx."  Finally there is <ailinos>
wailing, cry of anguish.  (Cf., Latin <feles>, cat; <fletus> weeping;
<flere>, to neigh as a horse does).

<feles>, the original Latin word for domestic cat, is often derived from
<felix>, referring either to the fecundity of cats or to the good effect they
have on preserving growing things and grains against rodents and birds.

Lidell-Scott give the first citation of <kattos> for cat as Aristophanes, but
this is ambiguous and may be too early.  <kottos> appears in Greek as
rooster, horse and two varieties of fish.  <chatos> may have been a rooster.
<gale:> refers in general to ferrets, martens, polecats and weasels.  The
lynx <lunx> is the main wildcat in the Greek world, drawing the chariot of
Bacchus and such.  In Latin, it is the ferret that gets the job of mouser by
name, <mustêla> or <mustella>, indicating maybe that cats were not that
common early on.

One possibility, though slightly distasteful to a cat appreciator like
myself, is that the cat got its name from the use of its parts.

Gr <kassuo:>, Att. <kattuo:>, to sew, to stitch together like a shoemaker.
<kattus>, a piece of leather (or animal skin.)  <katateino:>, stretch, draw
tigth, especially a cord or strip of animal skin.  Perhaps this is somehow
the source of "catgut", for which I haven't seen a decent explanation.
(Attested is a Persian or Babylonian fur prepared from mouse skins,
<gaunacum> or <kaunakê>, so anything was possible.)

<<G & I also list Arabic kitt, Aramaic katta, Georgian katla, Laz k'at'u,
Kabardian gedu, Dido gedu, Avar keto, Turkish kedi...If it's from Gaulish;
could it be derived from catu- "fighter"? -I remenber seeing a similar
sounding word meaning "stealthy" or whatnot. >>

Genetically, many domestic cat shows very close ties to the North African
breed.  (O'Brien, S. J.: Molecular genetics in the domestic cat and its
relatives. Trends Genet. 2: 137-142, 1986. Masuda, R., Lopez, J. V., Pecon
Slattery, J., Yuhki, N., and O'Brien, S. J.: Molecular phylogeny of
mitochondrial cytochrome b and 12S rRNA sequences in the Felidae: Ocelot and
domestic cat lineages. Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 6: 351-365, 1996.)

A Gaulish origin seems unlikely.  But all of the languages cited above could
have been influenced by the Hellenistic Greeks.

Regards,
Steve Long


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan 11 01:51:35 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 19:51:35 -0600
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro...
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.195135.0600.>

>> The were wild cats (Felis silvestris) in East European forests.

> And there still are in the Scottish Highlands

        Not that it matters ...
        The extinction of European wild cats anywhere in Europe is (I think)
fairly recent.  Except for having shorter tails, they are very close to
African Wild cats anyway.

Dr. David L. White


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 11 11:20:19 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 12:20:19 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro...
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.122019.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <colkitto at sprint.ca>
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 3:04 PM

[snip]
>> The were wild cats (Felis silvestris) in East European forests.

> And there still are in the Scottish Highlands

> Robert Orr

[Ed]
And in S. Belgium, but they are virtually extinct there.


From connolly at memphis.edu  Wed Jan 10 22:35:39 2001
From: connolly at memphis.edu (Leo A. Connolly)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 22:35:39 +0000
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.223539.0000.>

Diogo Almeida wrote:

>> From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
>> Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 14:41:17 -0500

>> [DGK]

>>> Does anyone know why <leche> is feminine?

>> There is a group of Latin neuters that became feminine in Spanish &
>> Portuguese and masculine in French and Italian.

> But "leite" (portuguese for "leche") is masculine ("o leite"), and I'm
> pretty sure that it is masculine both in Brazilian and European Portuguese.

The larger question is why we have _leche_ (as well as It. _latte_, Fr. _lait_
when there was no **_lactem_ so long as the word was neuter.  But if _lactem_
developed, then gender reassignment would be a must, and formally there would
have been no reason to choose masculine over feminine.  Why shouldn't a
product of the female breast become feminine?  If anything, it's the masculine
forms that need explaining.

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From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Jan 11 20:25:50 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 15:25:50 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
In-Reply-To: <F151hs6hdn1KVHYS8YV000105ad@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.152550.0500.>

	You're right. Please excuse that brain fart. The "odd-ball"
feminine forms exist in Spanish and include la leche, la flor, la sangre
and a few others --I seem to remember seeing a list of about a dozen or so.
	I thought it was Posner who linked the treatment of neuters in
Romance to singular and plural forms. Does anyone where that idea came
from? And more importantly, if it's really valid?
	Besides having nuanced gendered doublets such as "la mar, el mar",
"el charco, la charca", Spanish has a few regional differences in terms of
gender with such words as "el calor, la calor", "el sarte/n, la sarte/n",
"el di/namo, la dinamo" (I've only seen and heard the feminine variety
without an accent). How common is this phenomenon in other Romance
languages and other other languages with grammatical gender?

>>[DGK]

>>> Does anyone know why <leche> is feminine?

>> There is a group of Latin neuters that became feminine in Spanish &
>> Portuguese and masculine in French and Italian.

>But "leite" (portuguese for "leche") is masculine ("o leite"), and I'm
>pretty sure that it is masculine both in Brazilian and European Portuguese.

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


From r.piva at swissonline.ch  Fri Jan 12 19:45:59 2001
From: r.piva at swissonline.ch (Renato Piva)
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 20:45:59 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <FRI.12.JAN.2001.204559.0100.>

Diogo Almeida schrieb:

>> From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
>> Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 14:41:17 -0500

>> [DGK]
>>> Does anyone know why <leche> is feminine?

>> There is a group of Latin neuters that became feminine in Spanish &
>> Portuguese and masculine in French and Italian.

The word for milk was feminine in my dialect (Venetian terraferma, province of
Vicenza, Italy) at least until two generations ago. My grandmother (born 1899)
used to say 'la late', but I say 'el late', and so says my mother/her daughter.
I don' t know what dialectal forms may be found in the Atlas of the Italian
dialects by Jaberg & Jud, as I have no access to the University library for the
moment. But I'm sure that the situation in Italy is (or once was) a bit more
complicated than it seems as compared with the simple statement  that 'latin
neutra became masculine in Italian'. I  too would tend to maintain, as has
already been pointed out in this discussion, that the gender was influenced by
the fact that it is always the female that gives milk. But in the special case
of  Venetian terraferma one should also take into consideration that there was
some influence from German for some time, which I think hasn't been studied
toroughly enough, yet. And in German, 'Milch' is of feminine gender.

Regards,
Renato Piva


From evenstar at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Jan 12 21:39:08 2001
From: evenstar at mail.utexas.edu (Shilpi Misty Bhadra)
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 15:39:08 -0600
Subject: Calcutta/Kolkatta
In-Reply-To: <3A57D2EE.CF89D0D0@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.12.JAN.2001.153908.0600.>

At 06:22 PM 1/6/01 -0800, you wrote:
>JohnYY wrote:
>> We are discussing the linguistics of a mythic locale - I believe
>> that Bombay is no more, having been replaced officially by something
>> like "Mumbai".

>In that case I'll settle for an old map!  ;)

>Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/

Calcutta is now Kolkatta in the latest Indian news. Mumbai has been around
for a long time, as Chennai for Madras. The early Brits had a hard time
with pronouncing Indian names, although they didn't to have much trouble
with Delhi (which hasn't changed). ;) My family is from Calcutta/Kolkatta.
My mother's maiden name was Basu, but changed to Bose, because it would be
easier for the Brits to pronounce. But she hasn't changed her maiden name
spelling ... yet! ;)

Shilpi Misty Bhadra
University of Texas at Austin
Ancient History, Classics, and Humanities (focus: Indo-European Studies)
senior undergraduate
evenstar at mail.utexas.edu
512-320-0229 (ph)
512-476-3367 (fax)


From stevegus at aye.net  Fri Jan 12 22:57:40 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 17:57:40 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <FRI.12.JAN.2001.175740.0500.>

Dr. David L. White wrote:

>> Like the Germans who must have spoken PIE with a terrible
>> brogue, the Etruscans seem to have done great phonetic violence to Greek
>> words they imported.  Klytaimnestra = Clutmsta,  Herakles = Hercle,
>> Menelaos = Menle, Polydeuces = Pulutuk, Diomedes = Zimite.

> Also "Aplu".  But are these names really Greek, in the sense of
> having IE etymologies?  I have heard that of the Greek gods only Zeus is IE.
> Perhaps we have (in some cases) not mangling but borrowing from a common
> source.

I don't have a classical dictionary handy right here, but yes, most of the
Greek names on the list have specifically Greek etymologies.  This is what I
remember:  Hera-kles is "fame [kle(w)os] of Hera."  Klytaimnestra also
contains the klut- root, here meaning "famous for," but I forget what.
"Polydeuces" means "very sweet," and exists as a separate word in Greek with
that meaning.  (poly + deukos < gleukos).  Dio-medes means "protected by
Zeus."  Mene-laos means "confronting the people."

I am not sure if anyone has fathomed an IE etymology for Apollo.  There are
a number of other deities whose etymology, IIRC, is unknown (Poseidon) or
whose Greek etymology is considered dubious or after-the-fact (Aphrodite).

There was, of course, a substantial Greek presence in Italy during the years
before the rise of Rome as a major power.  And, as noted, the Etruscans seem
to have some connections on Lemnos and perhaps Asia Minor.  While I can
imagine widely different cultures inheriting deity names (Tyr/Zeus &c.), it
is a bit hard for me to imagine that the Etruscans would have somehow
inherited the House of Atreus and Trojan War story cycles from a common
source they shared with the Greeks.

--
    We will walk into the snow, and we will keep walking, until
    we reach the grey horizon.

    Ceterum censeo sedem Romanam esse delendam.


From sonno3 at hotmail.com  Fri Jan 12 23:26:44 2001
From: sonno3 at hotmail.com (Christopher Gwinn)
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 18:26:44 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <FRI.12.JAN.2001.182644.0500.>

> Also "Aplu".  But are these names really Greek, in the sense of
> having IE etymologies?  I have heard that of the Greek gods only Zeus is IE.

I wouldn't go that far - surely we have a few more like:
Pan (Archaic Paon) from PIE *Pausonos "nourisher" (the equivalent of Vedic
Pusan)
Thygater Dios (epithet of dawn goddess) from PIE *dhugHter diuos "daughter
of the sky" (=Lithuanian Dievo Dukte, Indic Duhita Divah)
Erynys may represent PIE *sereniuHs "speedy/quick one?" (= Vedic Saranyu).

There are others which have PIE etymologies, but no assured direct
linguistic matches to gods from other IE groups:
Hera (*yer- "season/year")
Poseidon (*poti-da-on- "husband of Da (mater)")
Dionysos (*diwo-nus-os "nursling of Dyeus")
Hades (*sam-wid- "reuniter")

Ares, Hephaistos, Artemis and Apollo are usually taken as loans.  (Artemis and
Apollo perhaps are Anatolian)

-Chris Gwinn


From sarima at friesen.net  Sat Jan 13 01:45:38 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 17:45:38 -0800
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
In-Reply-To: <00be01c07bc2$0d393a20$2606703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <FRI.12.JAN.2001.174538.0800.>

At 12:00 PM 1/11/01 +0100, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:
>> Hmm, is there any other evidence for the Umbrians preceding the Etruscans
>> in Etruria?  If this is really what happened it tends to remove the main
>> objections to the Villanova Culture being associated with Italic speakers.

>> [It also fits with my ideas about the origin of the italic peoples: if I am
>> right than the earlier dates for the arrival of the Etruscans would also be
>> ruled out, leaving circa 8th to 6th c. B.C.].

>[Ed]
>Note that I wrote "it SEEMS..". I am not aware of other arguments.

>As a non-specialist, I am a bit surprised by your late date for the arrival of
>the Umbrians (P-Italic).

I am tentatively using a model that derives the Italics as a whole from the
southern portion of the Urnfield Complex, perhaps in two or three
waves.  This seems to me the best bet for the arrival of a "western" IE
language in Italia.  Most of the earlier candidates have various problems,
to my way of thinking.

Thus the various Italic groups would arrive circa 9th century B.C. in my model.

This also fits with the general tendency of tribal groups to move into
prime territories during "dark ages" such as the one following the near
simultaneous fall of Mykenean Greece, the Hittite Empire, and the empires
of the fertile crescent - in the 11th c. B.C.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From stevegus at aye.net  Sat Jan 13 02:41:55 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 21:41:55 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <FRI.12.JAN.2001.214155.0500.>

Rick McCallister wrote:

> I'd like to see some sort of chronology regarding
> aspiration/friciativization or if it was just a case of better writing
> conventions

The example Diomedes > Zimite suggests that these changes were present in
pre-Roman times, though I don't have a date for the inscription in which
Zimite appears.  Since Etruscan seems to have had an unwritten schwa, or at
least syllabic nasals and liquids (spellings like Clutmsta leave little
option otherwise) it may be that "Zimite" represents something like /(d?)zi:
m. i te/, with something like syllabic /m./ as the second syllable,
preserving the four syllables of the borrowed Greek word.  Like in Coptic,
they may have written the syllabic liquids and nasals without a vowel.

According to Sihler's Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, assibilization
of T and D is attested by the 3d century A.D. in spellings like
"Marsianenses." for "Martianenses."

--
    We will walk into the snow, and we will keep walking, until
    we reach the grey horizon.

    Ceterum censeo sedem Romanam esse delendam.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sat Jan 13 19:09:05 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 14:09:05 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
In-Reply-To: <001701c07b73$07f005c0$e86663d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <SAT.13.JAN.2001.140905.0500.>

	A very good question
	Adolfo Zavaroni posits that Etruscan mangling of Greek names and
places is at least partially due to folk etymology
	In books on Greek myth, I've seen a wide gamut of possible origins
for names appearing in Greek myth.
	To give an example, Robert Graves linked almost every Greek deity
and mythic character to Greek. Off the top of my head, he, and many other
general writers linked Apollo to a word meaning "to destroy"; while Steven
Zimmer, in Markey & Greppin [1990: 311 ff] offers the following

	Pelasgian, non Greek IE of Greece and Balkans
Uranos "rainer" [Greek], see OI vars-
Kronos, probably Pelasgian corresponding to Greek géron; relationship to
khrónos is folk etymology
Zeus "bright, daylight sky" see OL Dyaus, Latin dius
Hera pre-IE
Athene pre-IE
Aphrodite pre-IE
Hermes pre Greek
Apollo pre-IE Anatolian; see Lydian PLdans, Hittite Ap-pa-li-u-na-as^,
Luwian Apulunas
Artemis < ? "bear goddess"; see Lydian Artimus^, ArtimuL, Artimu-k
Dionysus < ? Thracian "Son of Zeus"
Poseidon < Poteidáwon "Lord, Husband of the Earth" < ? Pelasgian
Ares < arê: < pre-IE
Hephaistos pre-Greek, probably pre-IE
Demeter "Earth Mother" < ? Messapic, see Messapic damatura [321-22]

	I suspect that Graves's etymologies are amateurish but I plead the
5th, on the grounds that any testimony I may give may reveal my ignorance :>
	But I'd like to hear from those in the know


>> Like the Germans who must have spoken PIE with a terrible
>> brogue, the Etruscans seem to have done great phonetic violence to Greek
>> words they imported.  Klytaimnestra = Clutmsta,  Herakles = Hercle,
>> Menelaos = Menle, Polydeuces = Pulutuk, Diomedes = Zimite.

>        Also "Aplu".  But are these names really Greek, in the sense of
>having IE etymologies?  I have heard that of the Greek gods only Zeus is IE.
>Perhaps we have (in some cases) not mangling but borrowing from a common
>source.
>
>Dr. David L. White

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


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Sun Jan 14 03:21:09 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 03:21:09 -0000
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <SUN.14.JAN.2001.032109.0000.>

>> [ Moderator's note:
>>   The hypothesis that the Etruscans may have originated in Anatolia appears
>>   to be supported by the presence on the island of Lemnos of a stele
>>   inscribed in a language clearly related to but differing from the Etruscan
>>   of Italy.
>>   --rma ]

>[Ed Selleslagh]

>I thought this was something of majority view. Of course, final proof is hard
>to get by, and one should keep an open mind. I'll give you some arguments, but
>I don't intend to start a new thread on this.

>The moderator's note is indeed the main argument. The stele found near Kaminia
>on Lemnos (by G. Cousin and F. D|rrbach in 1885) dates from the 6th or 7th c.
>B.C. The spelling differences (with Etruscan) can probably be explained by the
>different alphabet and the phonetic evolution during several centuries of
>separation (the date of arrival of the Etruscan's forefathers is rather
>unclear: the estimates vary from the 13th to the 6th c. B.C. But they seem to
>have arrived after the Umbrians had already established themselves in the
>later Etruria: the river now called Ombrone seems to bear their name).
>Example:  Etr.  <auils> - Lemn. <awidz> (probably meaning 'year(s)').

Examination of the Lemnian stele does not favor the hypothesis of Etruscan
emigration from Anatolia. The alphabet of the stele and similar minor
inscriptions found on Lemnos belongs to the Euboico-Chalcidian family, not
directly related to the Phrygian alphabet used in NW Anatolia and Gordium,
and out of place among the East Ionian and Cycladic alphabets typical of the
Aegean. Features include the Lemnian use of the zigzag sign as a sibilant
(not a vowel as in Phrygian), the fricative value of H (vocalic in East
Ionian), the psi-shaped chi (X-shaped in Cycladic and EI), and the existence
of vau (digamma, already extinct in EI). The Lemnian alphabet is clearly an
intrusion from the West. Indeed it is difficult to derive this alphabet
directly from Euboea without going through the Chalcidian models of Greek
communities in Italy. For details see Carlo de Simone, "I Tirreni a Lemnos:
l'alfabeto" in Studi Etruschi LX, 1994, pp. 145-63.

The stele contains the phrase <holaies' naphoth> which is plausibly
'grandson of Holaie'; Lemn. Holaie = Hylaeus (A. Trombetti, "La lingua
etrusca", Firenze 1928, pp. 188-92). <Naphoth> corresponds to Etr. <nefts>,
<nef(i)s'> which is a loanword from Umbrian (A.J. Pfiffig, "Die etruskische
Sprache", Graz 1969, p. 297). The stele also contains <aker tavars'io
vanalasial>, evidently the name of the honored/deceased in regular Etruscan
form: Aker = praenomen, Tavars'io = gentilicium, Vanalasial = metronymic. To
my knowledge *Acer is unattested as a praenomen in Etruria, but its former
existence is indicated by the gentilicia Acri (TLE 618; CIE 3987,4257),
Acrie (CIE 5039), and Acrni (TLE 442). For parallel derivation see the
gentilicia Veli (CIE 3421,3933,4322 etc.), Velie (TLE 7; CIE 752,2702), and
Velni (CIE 4335,4682/3), all formed from the common praenomen Vel.

This PN-GN-MN naming system originated in central Italy with the Etruscans
and Italics before 700 BCE, though it took some 200 years to become
established in Campania (M. Cristofani et al., "Il sistema onomastico" in
AA. VV. "L'Etrusco arcaico", Firenze 1976, pp. 92-134). Aker's metronymic is
based on the feminine gentilicium *Vanalasi. The feminine name-suffix <-i>
was borrowed into Etruscan from Italic (de Simone op.cit. note 78). These
points strongly suggest that the Etruscan community which left the stele and
other inscriptions on Lemnos emigrated from Italy, probably around 650 BCE.
The emigration must be dated after the development of the Italo-Etruscan
gentilician naming system, but before the establishment of standard writing
systems throughout the Etruscan-speaking parts of Italy.

Other features of the inscription indicate that "Lemnian" should be regarded
as a dialect of Archaic Etruscan, not a separate language, and hence not
sufficiently remote from mainland Etruscan to serve for reconstruction of
"Uretruskisch" or "Proto-Tyrrhenian". The Lemnian phrase <sialchveis' avis'>
corresponds to Recent Etr. <s'ealchls avils> 'of sixty years (of age)' (or
40 if you follow Torp's numeral scheme; cf. TLE 98). Note that Etr. <avils>
is a genitive sg./pl. 'of year(s)'. The Lemnian dative phrase <holaies'i
phokiasiale> 'to Hylaeus the Phocaean' corresponds in form to Recent Etr.
<larthiale hulchniesi> (TLE 84) and several Arch. Etr. dedicatory
inscriptions. The mention of a Phocaean Greek, of course, says nothing about
the provenance of these or any other Etruscan-speakers.

As for your Ombrone (anc. Umbro), there are two rivers by that name as well
as a Calabrian stream formerly called Oumbros. The stem Umbr- has no
plausible Umbrian or other IE etymology. It was probably applied to certain
rivers by non-Etruscan pre-IE substrate-speakers, then to dwellers in or
across a particular river-valley (G. Alessio, "Mediterranei ed Italici
nell'Italia centrale" in St. Etr. XXIX, 1961, pp. 191-217). The Umbrians
themselves used <naharkum numem> (Lat. *Narcum nomen) to denote the nation
of dwellers in the valley of the Nar (mod. Nera), probably Sabines. There
are good reasons to believe that Umbrians antedated Etruscans in this corner
of the world, but the hydronym Ombrone is not one of them.

>The general aspect of the language is flecting, with elements that recall
>(P)IE (e.g. -c, Lat. -que, Greek -te, but that could be contamination), but
>more similar to e.g. Lydian (-l, -s genitives), apparently with a strong
>initial accent and pileups of consonants. In short: like a cousin rather than
>a descendant of ('narrow') PIE.

Etruscan nominal morphology is agglutinative and allows redetermination: an
oblique case may be substantivized and may serve as the base for further
inflection. E.g.:

  tus'  n. 'niche'
  tus't(h)i  loc. 'in the niche' TLE 630,631,655
  tus'ur  pl. 'niches'
  tus'urthi  loc. 'in the niches' TLE 586,627
  tus'urthir  pl. 'those (dead spouses) in the niches' TLE 587

  papa  n. 'grandfather'
  papals  abl. 'from the grandfather' = 'grandchild' TLE 437
  papalser  pl. 'grandchildren (of male)' TLE 169; Tab. Cort.

  Calu  n. 'god of Death'
  Calus  gen. 'belonging to Calu' cf. TLE 642
  Calusur  pl. 'those belonging to Calu' = 'the dead'
  Calusurasi  dat. 'to those etc.' = 'to the dead' TLE 172

Can your favorite IE language do that?

>A few years ago, M. Carrasquer made a tentative family tree I will send you
>privately since this list doesn't allow it.

Thank you. I don't dispute the outline of this tree (other than the position
of Gmc. which is not presently under discussion). What is needed for serious
assessment of Proto-Indo-Tyrrhenian is a table of sound-changes between PT
and PIE or PIH (other than the work of certifiable kooks, who are attracted
to Etruscan like fruit flies to a banana display). This in turn requires a
deeper knowledge of native Etruscan vocabulary. Attempting to reconstruct
PIT with current data would be premature at best.

If we take the date of 1200 BCE for the presumed Etruscan emigration, and
regard the Etruscans of Lemnos as a relict population, we are confronted by
the absence of corroboration in the classical authors. Homer does not
mention Etruscans (Turse:noi, "Tyrrhenians") on Lemnos; his inhabitants of
Lemnos are Sinties (Il. I.593-4; Od. VIII.294). These were Thracians
according to Strabo (Geog. VII fr. 45; XII.3.20). Early references to
Tyrrhenians (Hesiod, Theog. 1016; "Homeric" Hymn to Dionysus HH 7.8) do not
involve Lemnos. Later tradition has the Minyae, descended from the
Argonauts, expelled from Lemnos by Pelasgians (Hdt. IV.145; Paus. VII.2.2).
The island was eventually taken over by the Athenians (Hdt. VI.139-40).
Thucydides, in listing bilingual barbarians living near Athos some years
afterward (IV.109.4), mentions Tyrrhenians formerly inhabiting Lemnos and
Athens. It is hardly likely that a substantial population of Etruscans lived
on Lemnos for several centuries. More probable is a small colony of
Etruscans (retired pirates?) between ca. 650-450 BCE, with the majority of
the island's inhabitants being Pelasgians at that time.

The source of the Anatolian-Etruscan hypothesis is of course the story
related by Herodotus (I.94). The Lydians claimed to have colonized Etruria
during a long famine, having sent half the population away under the king's
son Tyrsenus, whose name was then taken by the colonists. The whole story is
presented in indirect discourse depending on <phasi de autoi Ludoi> 'and the
Lydians themselves say...' indicating that Herodotus does not attach factual
weight to it. As the historian admits elsewhere (VII.152) <ego: de opheilo:
legein ta legomena, peithesthai ge men ou pantapasi opheilo:> 'I am obliged
to tell the stories, but I am not obliged to believe them unconditionally'.

Among later authors Velleius Paterculus took this story at face-value, but
Dionysius Halicarnassius, who spent years actually studying the Etruscans in
Etruria, rejected it. VP has had no shortage of successors, even now, who
blithely ride the Anatolian-Etruscan bandwagon.

>There are also non-linguistic arguments, like the bronze liver of Piacenza,
>used as a model by Etruscan fortune tellers, which has N. Mesopotamian
>characteristics. Or the considerable Greek content of Etruscan culture.

The bronze liver is rather late as Etruscan artefacts go. Greeks had a
considerable presence in Italy from early times; the Greek inscription of
Gabii is dated to ca. 770 BCE; we can infer that most if not all of the
Greek content was transferred to Etruscan culture on Italian soil.

A powerful "argumentum ex silentio" against Etruscans coming from Anatolia
in the late II-early I mill. BCE is the absence of Mesopotamian deities and
motifs in early (un-Hellenized) Etruscan religion.

>Although this isn't really an argument, I would like to add this:

[snip of material on Aeneid]

>All this means is that probably some people from the north-eastern
>Mediterranean arrived in Latium or thereabout in or before the earliest
>days of
>the Roman tradition.

I don't dispute the last point. A lot of things happened in the aftermath of
the Trojan War. I just don't find it plausible that Etruscan emigration from
Anatolia was one of them.

DGK


From miskec4096 at hotmail.com  Sun Jan 14 21:42:50 2001
From: miskec4096 at hotmail.com (Kreso Megyeral)
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 22:42:50 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <SUN.14.JAN.2001.224250.0100.>

Steve Gustafson wrote:

>I have wondered about whether the Etruscans are somehow related to the
>proto-Germans.  Like the Germans who must have spoken PIE with a terrible
>brogue, the Etruscans seem to have done great phonetic violence to Greek
>words they imported.  Klytaimnestra = Clutmsta,  Herakles = Hercle,
>Menelaos = Menle, Polydeuces = Pulutuk, Diomedes = Zimite.  These names also
>make you wonder whether their script was somehow inadequately supplied with
>vowels, or made heavy use of abbreviated forms.

The same thing occurs in Albanian in borrowings from Latin (imperator -
mbret, parentem - prind, fossatus - fshat), so I suppose it has nothing to
do with the script.


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri Jan 12 20:05:06 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 20:05:06 -0000
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <FRI.12.JAN.2001.200506.0000.>

>       Does anyone out there know where in the Aeneid Lemnos is mentioned?

The only reference in the Aeneid to Lemnos is 8:454, Lemnios pater (of
Vulcan).   It is a reference to Iliad 1:592, and perhaps Od 8:284.   Lemnios
became the dearest place on earth to Hephaestus (Vulcan).

Peter


From edsel at glo.be  Sun Jan 14 19:01:42 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 20:01:42 +0100
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <SUN.14.JAN.2001.200142.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at nb.net>
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2001 11:42 PM

>> Does anyone out there know where in the Aeneid Lemnos is mentioned?
>> I have not been able to find it.

> A tangential reference, I think, Aeneid 8.454:

> "Haec pater Aeoliis properat dum Lemnius oris, ..."

> -- Doug Wilson

[Ed Selleslagh]

I'm sorry I had overlooked that. However, this (Pater Lemnius) is simply a
reference to Hephaistos/Vulcanus, who was thrown on the island by one of his
parents.

Nonetheless, the subsequent verses - which I looked up again after your remark
- are relevant for Vergilius' idea (and confusion) about the origin of the
Etruscans and Italic people:

Book 8.478: Haud procul hinc saxo incolitur fundata vetusto urbis Agyllinae
sedes, ubi Lydia quondam gens, bello praeclara, iugis insedit Etruscis. ["hinc"
(from here) means 'from Rome'. J. Dryden identifies Agylla with the Etruscan
city of Caere. His translation of "iugis Etruscis" as "from the Tuscans('
yoke)" is inacceptable: it contradicts the whole context. If it were true, in
Vergilius' words, the Lydian immigrants would have chased the Etruscans from
the place. That would possibly mean that the Tuscans are confounded with the
Umbrians, an interesting possibility]

Book 8.499: O Maeoniae delecta iuventus, flos veterum virtusque virum, quos
iustus in hostem fert doloret merita accendit Mezentius ira, nulli fas Italo
tantam subiungere gentem: externos optate duces.[Maeonia is a region in Lydia].

So he clearly thinks the Etruscans are of Lydian origin (quite common in his
days) and are distinct from the Italic people. Of course he has to posit that
Aeneas is somehow Italic, otherwise his nationalistic epic wouldn't make sense.
On the other hand, he has him come from Troy, a city with a complex history of
successive cultures, most probably (in my view) first Anatolian - maybe Hittite
or some other/older culture from Anatolia - then Achaean/Greek. Its double name
Troy/Ilion could well be a sign of its mixed ethnic/linguistic history: the
root IL/R(I), UR(I) is found all over the Eastern Mediterranean (Mesopotamia,
Hebrew, some Greek toponyms like Hyria...), and in Basque (iri = city,
formerly ili); Iliki (now Alcudia, from 'the hill' in Arabic: it is a tell) was
an outpost of an Iberian settlement (now Elche in the Spanish province of
Alicante). Troy isn't all that far from Lemnos, on the route to S. Greece and
the rest of the Mediterranean.

So, all this is compatible with the idea that the Etruscans were of
geographically Anatolian origin, and possibly related to peoples speaking a
language somehow related to the Anatolian branch of "wide" PIE, and that some
of them were (still) in Kaminia on Lemnos in the 6th or 7th c. B.C. If the
relation to the Trojan war contains any truth at all, the forefathers of the
Etruscans would probably have left the region in the 12th c. B.C., which
corresponds to the earliest estimate of their arrival in Etruria. But who would
bet on that?

These are just some ideas, not intended to convince anyone who has good reasons
to think otherwise.

Ed.


From dalazal at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 16 01:15:16 2001
From: dalazal at hotmail.com (Diogo Almeida)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 20:15:16 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.201516.0500.>

>From: "Leo A. Connolly" <connolly at memphis.edu>
>Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 22:35:39 +0000

[ moderator snip ]

>The larger question is why we have _leche_ (as well as It. _latte_, Fr.
>_lait_ when there was no **_lactem_ so long as the word was neuter.  But if
>_lactem_ developed, then gender reassignment would be a must, and formally
>there would have been no reason to choose masculine over feminine.  Why
>shouldn't a product of the female breast become feminine?  If anything, it's
>the masculine forms that need explaining.

I'm no specialist and I don't know what was the vulgar latin or the early
romance word for milk on the Peninsula at that time, but my latin dictionary
gives "lacte, is" for milk (and "lac" as an archaic form). I think that
"lactem" then, would have been the accusative form (I have to rely on my
memory, though, since I don't have any Latin grammar with me :) ).
Portuguese, as a general rule, got the accusative form of latin words. So
"lactem" being the accusative, it seems likely that the word in Portuguese
developed from that form (I don't have an etymological dictionary with me,
though). And since neuter was absorbed by the masculine gender in general
(at least in Portuguese, I don't know about Spanish), i don't see any
problems with "leite" being masculine. On the other hand, "leche" as
feminine is strange to me, especially because Portuguese and Spanish
normally agree when it comes to the gender of the words.

>"formally there would have been no reason to choose masculine over feminine.
>Why shouldn't a product of the female breast become feminine?  If anything,
>it's the masculine forms that need explaining."

If the gender systems of Portuguese and Spanish were mainly semantically
driven, maybe. But they aren't. There is a strong formal element in gender
assingment in these languages. And as I said before, I think that neuter
words become masculine in Portuguese most of the time (and I guess this is
also true for Spanish).

Best wishes,
Diogo


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sat Jan 13 20:27:43 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 15:27:43 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro...
In-Reply-To: <000901c07b71$1adebde0$e86663d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <SAT.13.JAN.2001.152743.0500.>

	Do domestic cats only descend from North African cats? Or did they
also interbreed with various species of small local wildcats?

>>> The were wild cats (Felis silvestris) in East European forests.

>> And there still are in the Scottish Highlands

>        Not that it matters ...
>        The extinction of European wild cats anywhere in Europe is (I think)
>fairly recent.  Except for having shorter tails, they are very close to
>African Wild cats anyway.

>Dr. David L. White

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


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Mon Jan 15 11:19:17 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 11:19:17 -0000
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.111917.0000.>

On 4 Jan 2001, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

>[DGK]
>> Alessio rejects the connection between the Sardo-Corsican dog-terms and
>> Basque <zakur>, <txakur> on phonetic grounds. He suggests <zakur> might be
>> derived from a Ligurian form represented by Late Lat. <segusius>, Ital.
>> <segugio> 'bloodhound'.

>[RMCC]
>	Corominas is locked up in the library for the next week or so, so I
>hope you don't mind me asking how and if Spanish sabueso "bloodhound" is
>derived from segusius. It looks possible but messy: I can see sabueso from
>something like *sagu"eso < *sagOso- but it gives an open /O/, rather than
>closed /o/ that would be expected from /u/
>	Or is it directly from substrate?

I would guess directly from substrate. Otherwise the /a/ of the first
syllable is also hard to derive from Latin /e/. The first "u" of segusius is
presumed long on the basis of "grecizzato" egousia, which I neglected to
mention in my posting. 3 of the 4 possible variations of /a:e/
correspondence are found in presumed substratal words:

  Lat. cerrus, It. cerro, Sp. carrasco 'holm-oak'
  Lat. larix, It. larice, Sp. alerce 'larch'
  Lat. betula, It. betulla, Sp. abedul 'birch'
  It. cheppia, Sp. sa'balo, saboga, saboca 'shad'

These are practically the only examples I have, so I don't know whether the
vowel-alternation and prosthetic /a/ are strictly determined by phonetic
environment.

>> Ligurians living near Tartessos are reported by Steph. Byz. (s.v.
>> Ligustine), and Thuc. (VI.2.2) says the Sicanians claimed to be Iberians
>> driven from the basin of the Sikanos (mod. Jucar?) by Ligurians. Alessio
>> thus hypothesizes that the Ligurians brought substratal forms from the
>> Balkans to southern Spain, whence the Iberians passed some of them (perhaps
>> including <zakur>) on to the Basques, giving Hubschmid and others the false
>> impression that Basque itself originated in the East.

>	So Alessio proposed the Lusitanians = "IE Ligurians" = Illyrians
>hypothesis? By "IE Ligurians", I mean the non-Celtic, non-Italic IE
>speakers of N Italy & S France
>	I've also seen claims that the Sikani themselves were Ligurians
>based on toponymic similarities between names in Sicily and Liguria

Actually, I have not seen Alessio mention Lusitanians in his papers which I
have read so far, and his Ligurians (or Balkano-Ligurians) are
non-IE-speakers responsible for substratal material like the examples above.
In one of his papers Alessio quotes Festus (414 L.) "Reate orti [Sacrani]
qui a Septimontio Ligures Siculosque exegerunt" and argues that this shows
the identity of Ligures and Siculi. I don't see this; Festus seems to be
referring to two distinct nations. Likewise Alessio reads the identity of
Ligues and Sikanoi into Thucydides (VI.2.2), who actually states the Sikanoi
claimed to have been driven away from the Sikanos by the Ligues.

In my own humble view, the Siculi probably represent the first wave of
IE-speakers into Italy, responsible for forms in which PIE medial *dh has
become /t/ (Aitne/Aetna, Rutuli, Liternum/Leuternon, and probably the source
of Etr. lautni 'freedman'). Thucydides (VI.2.4) says there were still some
Siculi in Italy in his time. The Sicani claimed to be Iberians, but if this
term is understood geographically, they might be identifiable with the
non-Celtic, non-Italic IE-speakers of Liguria, and their later migration to
Sicily might explain the similarity of toponyms. Provisionally I prefer to
retain "Ligurian" for one of the well-defined pre-IE substrates in Italy,
the other being "Pelasgian" (citrus, menta, rosa <- *wrodia, vaccinium,
viola, etc.). Etruscan is non-IE but not pre-IE and does not qualify as a
substrate. Not that any of this is likely to clear the air...

DGK


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sat Jan 13 07:16:53 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 02:16:53 EST
Subject: Early Goths as Drinkers
Message-ID: <SAT.13.JAN.2001.021653.EST.>

In a message dated 1/12/2001 7:16:16 PM, dlwhite at texas.net writes:
<< It could be an "other-name" (if that is the opposite of "self-name") from
other Germans.>>

That's a possibility, but it could have been a name given by Celts or
Sarmatians or Finns, too.  The idea of looking to Greek is simply based on
the fact that the name first appears in Greek, and there's a fair lists of
tribal names in Greek that seem to or clearly do mean something in Greek, or
at least have a folk or conjectured etymology in Greek.  Add to the heavy
influence that Greek had on the first writing in Gothic (including its
script), and it seems reasonable at least to take a look.

<<If "pour" had in some dialects come to mean 'drink' (perhaps jocularly in
the beginning, and/or end), then I suppose it's conceivable that the name
meant "drunks" or "drinkers", though I wouldn't bet on it. >>

Well, it's a bit more subtle than that.  There were strong religious and
cultural implications in alcohol among certain groups in that place and time,
and one might see them transposed into Christian rituals, for example.  The
notion of pouring libations over the dead was an old one among the Greeks,
mentioned in Homer.  Other rituals at meals and certain times of the year
also involved offering a pour (maybe a <kas/katils>, Gothic, vessels for
liquids) to the dead or to spirits.  A book which I have not seen came out
recently about evidence of feasting in connection with Cernjachov ("Gothic")
burials, perhaps something like an Irish wake.

The notion suggested by some scholars that the Goths were a religious
grouping as much as an ethnic one might suggest that the name might refers to
specific, characteristic rituals (as, e.g., "Baptist").  Some connection may
be made to the practice of pouring libations to the dead or other such
rituals reflected in Greek words like <choe:>, <chutos>, <chutlon> and
<choe:phoros> (offering "choai" to the dead, as in the tragedy Choe:phoroi,
where the Chorus pours choai to the shade of Agamemnon.)  Because our direct
knowledge of Gothic is after Christianization in primarily Christian texts,
perhaps we only see the remnants of these practices in Gothic words like
<us-gutnan>, <gudja>, <guda> and even perhaps a satemized <sa:uths>,
sacrifice, burnt-offering.

But in all there isn't much sense in betting on any of these interpretations,
including the ones about floods and semen, because one appears to be as
likely or unlikely as the other.  Which is to some degree the point I'm
making.

Regards,
Steve Long


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sat Jan 13 20:25:20 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 15:25:20 -0500
Subject: cat < ?
In-Reply-To: <92.ed95e36.278eb425@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.13.JAN.2001.152520.0500.>

Thanx for the impressive inventory of feline knowledge

Buck [1949: 181] suggests that
Greek aie/louros, ai/louros "cat, marten, ferret, weasel, etc." may be from
aio/los "quick" + oura/: "tail"

In my notes, Buck offers no etymology for Latin fe:le:s "cat, marten,
ferret", although Buck says to see Welsh beleu "marten"

Someone, maybe Partridge 1958, links feles to Latin meles "badger"

I suppose Hindi bhili "cat" would be too fortuitous to suggest a connection
based on *bhil-, *bhel-?

[snip]

>The earlier term for cats in Greek was <ailouros> or <aielouro>.  Herodotus
>describes them in Egypt in a way that seems to indicate that domestic cats
>were not very familiar to his readers.  Aristophanes mentions cats as part of
>a grabbag of wild game that is to be eaten.

	Yum!

><ailouros> might be some kind of a contraction, <Aiguptos?> + <ouros>,
>guardian.  Or a compound, <haili-> <ouros>, ship watcher.  (A study in the
>'70's showed that the spread of the currently dominant feral breed of
>domestic cat, the blotched tabby, can be traced back to European sea port
>towns.  Associating cats with ships might be the first impression -
>especially since they served the purpose of protecting grain cargoes against
>mice and rats.)  <ouros> is also a word in Greek refering to Egyptian desert
>country and the Libyan desert wildcat is very closely related to the European
>domestic cat.

	So is there a Greek Dick Whittington tale?

><ouros> also brings up the Lynx and <lungourion>, a kind of
>amber, the word derived by both Latins and Greeks "from lunx, ouron, and
>supposed to be the coagulated urine of the lynx."  Finally there is <ailinos>
>wailing, cry of anguish.  (Cf., Latin <feles>, cat; <fletus> weeping;
><flere>, to neigh as a horse does).
>
><feles>, the original Latin word for domestic cat, is often derived from
><felix>, referring either to the fecundity of cats or to the good effect they
>have on preserving growing things and grains against rodents and birds.

	From what I gather, feles was originally applied to a ferret,
mongoose or other type of weasel. I like your ailouros etymology a lot more
>
>Lidell-Scott give the first citation of <kattos> for cat as Aristophanes, but
>this is ambiguous and may be too early.  <kottos> appears in Greek as
>rooster, horse and two varieties of fish.  <chatos> may have been a rooster.
><gale:> refers in general to ferrets, martens, polecats and weasels.  The
>lynx <lunx> is the main wildcat in the Greek world, drawing the chariot of
>Bacchus and such.  In Latin, it is the ferret that gets the job of mouser by
>name, <mustêla> or <mustella>, indicating maybe that cats were not that
>common early on.

	Are there any known IE roots for these words?
>
>One possibility, though slightly distasteful to a cat appreciator like
>myself, is that the cat got its name from the use of its parts.
>
>Gr <kassuo:>, Att. <kattuo:>, to sew, to stitch together like a shoemaker.
><kattus>, a piece of leather (or animal skin.)  <katateino:>, stretch, draw
>tigth, especially a cord or strip of animal skin.  Perhaps this is somehow
>the source of "catgut", for which I haven't seen a decent explanation.
>(Attested is a Persian or Babylonian fur prepared from mouse skins,
><gaunacum> or <kaunakê>, so anything was possible.)

	My intuition is that cats would have been too valuable but in a
society that feasted on lark's tongues, anything's possible

[snip]

>Genetically, many domestic cat shows very close ties to the North African
>breed.

[snip]

So, if we could only find a Berber word of sufficient antiquity linked both
semantically and phonologically. But I suppose if one existed, it would
already be cited in OED

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


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sat Jan 13 20:46:48 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 15:46:48 -0500
Subject: dulcis/lac?
In-Reply-To: <LPBBJKMNINKHACNDIIGMMECGDHAA.a.rosta@newmail.net>
Message-ID: <SAT.13.JAN.2001.154648.0500.>

	I remember seeing something like that bruited about and rejected
for whatever reason --too long? too complex?
	It may have been in a post by Alexis Manaster Ramer, I'm not sure
	If [something like] *dlak- were indeed possible
I'm wondering
	1. If there were a possibility of a semantic link to Buck's
proposed *dluk- [if it is indeed valid] based on "sweet, sweetness, sweet
liquid"
	2. If this works, then if milk might not spring a type of calque
based on *mel- "honey" > *mlak-, *melgh-, etc. meaning something like
"sweet, sweet liquid, honeyed, honey liquid"
	I believe there are proposed Nostratic roots for "milk" & "honey"
based on [off the top of my head] something like *ml-, *mlk-/mlgh-; so such
a connection would not necessarily upset the Nostratic apple cart --but
that's something we can discuss on FM :>


>> 	I noticed that Buck [among others] suggests
>> Latin dulcis & Greek gluku/s < *dluk-
>> 	I'm wondering if there's any possibility of
>> Latin lac, lact- & Greek gala, galakt- < *dlak-
>> 	I've also seen Latin loquor linked to [something like] Gaelic tlu-,
>> and English talk

>OTOH, *gmlkt has the advantage of, with suitable snippage,
>giving also the Germanic form...

>--And.

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


From dlwhite at texas.net  Sun Jan 14 14:58:01 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 08:58:01 -0600
Subject: IE 'wolf'
Message-ID: <SUN.14.JAN.2001.085801.0600.>

> What are to make of Gaulish Louernios (*loup-ern-io), "fox," which may stem
> from the same root as Indic lopasa, Avestan raopi ? These words are related
> to Latin lupus in Pokorny.

> -Chris Gwinn

        I supose that the 'wolf' and 'fox' words are ultimately splits from
a single word, and that both were subject to tabu deformation.
        Re-stating, hopefully more clearly, what I originally said, it
appears that we have 1) a variation between /lu/ and /wl/, and 2) a
variation between /k(w)/ and /p/.   All four possibilities are found meaning
'wolf' in some IE language.    I hope this attempt at a table makes it.  It
probably won't ...

                                          /lu/        /wl/
                            /k(w)/   luka       vlka
                                /p/    lupo      wolf

        These variations do not, as far as I know, seem to be due to
sound-change or borrowing, as they are not generally characteristic of the
various branches in question.  The first part, /lu/ or /wl/, may well be
relatable by sound-symbolism to various words for 'howl' (which itself is,
or was, an example), or 'be destroyed' (Greek 'olumi'), or the sound made by
modern Middle Eastern women at funerals and what not.

Dr. David L. White


From alderson at xkl.com  Thu Jan 18 19:03:42 2001
From: alderson at xkl.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 14:03:42 -0500
Subject: [juhani.klemola@helsinki.fi: Call for Papers]
Message-ID: <THU.18.JAN.2001.140342.0500.>

I am forwarding the following announcement with the permission of Dr. Klemola.
Requests for further information should be sent to the conference addresses
below.

------- Start of forwarded message -------
Message-ID:  <3A64630B.6891.134BE56 at localhost>
Date:         Tue, 16 Jan 2001 10:22:17 EST
Reply-To: juhani.klemola at helsinki.fi
From: Juhani Klemola <juhani.klemola at helsinki.fi>
Subject:      Call for Papers
To: HISTLING at VM.SC.EDU

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
                               Call for Papers

       International Colloquium on Early Contacts between English and
                             the Celtic Languages
          University of Joensuu Research Station, Mekrijarvi, Finland
                              24-26 August, 2001

Scholars interested in historical and linguistic contacts between
English and the Celtic languages are invited to offer contributions to
 the "International Colloquium on Early Contacts between English
and the Celtic Languages", which will be held from August 24 to
26, 2001, at the University of Joensuu Research Station in
Mekrijarvi, North Karelia, Finland.

The aim of the Colloquium is to bring together distinguished
scholars =96 historians, Celticists, Anglicists, and general linguists =96
 to discuss the nature and extent of the historical and linguistic
contacts between speakers of Celtic languages and speakers of
Germanic languages and their impact on the development of the
English language. Despite the recent rise of interest in the
possibility of Celtic substratum influences in English, there have so
 far been few opportunities for scholars working on different aspects
 of this question to come together and exchange their findings. It is
 the purpose of this Colloquium to provide a forum for such
discussion. A selection of the papers will be published.

The contributions are expected to address questions relating to the
 following broad topics:

(i) the historical background to the early (i.e. medieval and  early
    modern) contacts between speakers of Celtic and  Germanic
    languages;

(ii)the linguistic outcomes of the early contacts in phonology,
    grammar and lexis.

The following speakers are already confirmed: Anders Ahlqvist
(Galway), Andrew Breeze (Navarra), Richard Coates (Sussex),
Nick Higham (Manchester), Cathair =D3 Dochairtaigh (Glasgow),
Erich Poppe (Marburg), Peter Schrijver (Munich), Hildegard L.C.
Tristram (Potsdam), Theo Vennemann (Munich), and Kalevi Wiik
(Turku).

The Colloquium will be organised by the project group =93English and
Celtic in Contact=94, whose members are Prof. Markku Filppula
(University of Joensuu), Dr. Juhani Klemola (University of Helsinki),
and Ms Heli Pitkanen (University of Joensuu). Funded by the
Academy of Finland, this project is run jointly by the Department of
 English, University of Joensuu, and the Research Unit for Variation
 and Change in English, University of Helsinki.
(For more information about the project please check the website
http://www.joensuu.fi/fld/ecc/)

Please note that only a limited number of papers (20+10 minutes)
can be accepted because of the limitations of space at the
Mekrijarvi Research Station. The conference fee of FIM 1000
(approx. =A3100 sterling) will cover 3 nights' full board and lodging at
Mekrijarvi from Thursday evening to Sunday afternoon, and coach
transportation from Joensuu to Mekrijarvi on the evening of
Thursday 23 August and back to Joensuu on Sunday 26 August.
The programme will run from Friday morning till Sunday afternoon.

Abstracts (maximum 1 page) and all enquiries should be sent to Dr
 Juhani Klemola, e-mail juhani.klemola at helsinki.fi (conventional
mail: Department of English, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 3,
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland). The deadline for
submission  is 15 March, 2001.

------- End of forwarded message -------


From xavier.delamarre at free.fr  Tue Jan 16 08:35:28 2001
From: xavier.delamarre at free.fr (Xavier Delamarre)
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 09:35:28 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
In-Reply-To: <F86WmXE76INmn4K4dcX000079c1@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.093528.0100.>

    We must thank Douglas G. Kilday for his extremely clear, balanced and
convincing presentation of Etruscan origins.

    X. Delamarre


From stevegus at aye.net  Tue Jan 16 04:49:20 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 23:49:20 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.234920.0500.>

Douglas G. Kilday wrote:

> Etruscan nominal morphology is agglutinative and allows redetermination: an
> oblique case may be substantivized and may serve as the base for further
> inflection. E.g.:

>   tus'  n. 'niche'
>   tus't(h)i  loc. 'in the niche' TLE 630,631,655
>   tus'ur  pl. 'niches'
>   tus'urthi  loc. 'in the niches' TLE 586,627
>   tus'urthir  pl. 'those (dead spouses) in the niches' TLE 587

>   papa  n. 'grandfather'
>   papals  abl. 'from the grandfather' = 'grandchild' TLE 437
>   papalser  pl. 'grandchildren (of male)' TLE 169; Tab. Cort.

>   Calu  n. 'god of Death'
>   Calus  gen. 'belonging to Calu' cf. TLE 642
>   Calusur  pl. 'those belonging to Calu' = 'the dead'
>   Calusurasi  dat. 'to those etc.' = 'to the dead' TLE 172

> Can your favorite IE language do that?

Not often, no.

But my understanding is that the business of the reconstruction of the IE
noun case system reveals a number of both stillborn and fossil cases that,
had they been generalised, would have added to the number of cases
recoverable.  Moreover, my recollection is that the existence of languages
with otherwise conservative morphology, like Greek, Gothic, and Hittite,
that never seem to have had the full complement of Sanskrit cases, and the
strongly different system that prevails in the Tocharian languages, has led
some to suggest that the PIE cases may have been added to, rather than
subtracted from.

The Sanskrit, Celtic, and Latin cases that are formed in the plural on *-bh-
seem to be elaborations on a common suffix, at least somewhat comparable to
the Etruscan cases.  Germanic and Slavic apparently used a different suffix,
*-m-, and Slavic may have worked it the same way.  This suggests to me, that
the PIE cases may once have had agglutinative features, and that we can
still see part of the process by which they were built up.

Moreover, the *bh- suffix has been fossilized in Greek words
like -thyrephi-, "outside."  This was once a productive instrumental style
case in Greek, as revealed in Mycenean ko-ru-pi, "with helmets," and
po-ni-ki-pi, "using purple dye."   Of course, you now have N. English fossil
case forms like "seldom" and "random."  This last, at least, can be nouned
as well, and made the base of new formations like "randomize."

English and Scandinavian also exhibit the interesting trait of vagrant case
markers, of the "Queen of England's knickers" type.  PIE can't do this
either.

I may be a certifiable kook [and I cheerfully confess, no more than an
interested amateur], but it seems that the Etruscan noun morphology ---
though it has obviously been substantially reshaped --- does not rule out
that there may be a common ancestor between PIE and Etruscan.  I would not
speculate that Etruscan is a direct descendant of PIE.  Etruscan strikes me
as interesting, in that it seems a logical place to -test- theories about
super-families.

--
   Farouche et raffolant des donjons moyen bge,
   J'irais m'ensevelir au fond d'un vieux manoir:
   Comme je humerais le mysthre qui nage
   Entre de vastes murs tendus de velours noir!
                                  --- Maurice Rollinat


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue Jan 16 16:06:31 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 10:06:31 -0600
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.100631.0600.>

Dear Rick and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick Mc Callister" <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2001 1:09 PM

<snip>

 Off the top of my head, he, and many other
general writers linked Apollo to a word meaning "to destroy"; while Steven
Zimmer, in Markey & Greppin [1990: 311 ff] offers the following

<snip>

[PR]

Some may be interested in my attempt to etymologize Apollo as *apa-, 'father' +
*leun-, 'lion', at

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/apollo.htm

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindgá meiði a netr allar nío, geiri vndaþr . . . a þeim
meiþi, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rótom renn." (Hávamál 138)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Tue Jan 16 19:30:05 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 20:30:05 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
In-Reply-To: <F86WmXE76INmn4K4dcX000079c1@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.203005.0100.>

On Sun, 14 Jan 2001 03:21:09 -0000, "Douglas G Kilday"
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

>Examination of the Lemnian stele does not favor the hypothesis of Etruscan
>emigration from Anatolia. The alphabet of the stele and similar minor
>inscriptions found on Lemnos belongs to the Euboico-Chalcidian family, not
>directly related to the Phrygian alphabet used in NW Anatolia and Gordium,
>and out of place among the East Ionian and Cycladic alphabets typical of the
>Aegean. Features include the Lemnian use of the zigzag sign as a sibilant
>(not a vowel as in Phrygian), the fricative value of H (vocalic in East
>Ionian), the psi-shaped chi (X-shaped in Cycladic and EI), and the existence
>of vau (digamma, already extinct in EI). The Lemnian alphabet is clearly an
>intrusion from the West. Indeed it is difficult to derive this alphabet
>directly from Euboea without going through the Chalcidian models of Greek
>communities in Italy. For details see Carlo de Simone, "I Tirreni a Lemnos:
>l'alfabeto" in Studi Etruschi LX, 1994, pp. 145-63.

But Lemnos is only 50km or so off the Chalcidian coast.  It is
definitely not an Ionian, Aeolic or Cycladic island.  In fact, the
surprising thing would be if the alphabet did *not* belong to the
Euboico-Chalcidian family.

>The stele contains the phrase <holaies' naphoth> which is plausibly
>'grandson of Holaie'; Lemn. Holaie = Hylaeus (A. Trombetti, "La lingua
>etrusca", Firenze 1928, pp. 188-92). <Naphoth> corresponds to Etr. <nefts>,
><nef(i)s'> which is a loanword from Umbrian (A.J. Pfiffig, "Die etruskische
>Sprache", Graz 1969, p. 297).

Larissa Bonfante says the word was borrowed in Etruscan from Latin,
and in fact it might have been borrowed from any Indo-European
language having a reflex of *nepot-, including Greek (Homeric
<nepodes>) or even Carian (<nchoth> or <nphoth> "child", if I can
trust Woudhuizen's sources [Meriggi]).  So this word is rather
inconclusive, except that it's obviously easier to go from <naphoth>
to <nefts> than the other way around.

>The stele also contains <aker tavars'io
>vanalasial>, evidently the name of the honored/deceased in regular Etruscan
>form: Aker = praenomen, Tavars'io = gentilicium, Vanalasial = metronymic.

The two lines are usually read: "vanalasial s'eronai morinail / aker
tavars'io" (I'm sure there's a reason for reading "vanalasial", but on
every copy I've seen, what I read is: "va.m.ala.sial:
s'eronaimorinail").  There is no compelling reason not to accept your
alternative reading "Aker Tavars'io / Vanalasial S'eronai Morinail",
but if the first 3 words are the name of the deceased, what is the
meaning of <s'eronaimorinail>, apparently the genitive of "in Seruna,
in Murina"?

I'm personally convinced that the name of the deceased is "S'ivai", as
the central message of the stele seems to be (repeated twice: in the
front center, and on the side):  S'ivai evistho S'eronaith sialchveis'
avis' maras'm av[is' ais'] / S'ivai avis' sialchvis' maras'm avis'
aomai  [approxiamtely: "Sivai, "evistho" in Seruna, of years 60[?]
and[?] 5[?] years died[?]"].

>Other features of the inscription indicate that "Lemnian" should be regarded
>as a dialect of Archaic Etruscan, not a separate language, and hence not
>sufficiently remote from mainland Etruscan to serve for reconstruction of
>"Uretruskisch" or "Proto-Tyrrhenian". The Lemnian phrase <sialchveis' avis'>
>corresponds to Recent Etr. <s'ealchls avils> 'of sixty years (of age)' (or
>40 if you follow Torp's numeral scheme; cf. TLE 98). Note that Etr. <avils>
>is a genitive sg./pl. 'of year(s)'. The Lemnian dative phrase <holaies'i
>phokiasiale> 'to Hylaeus the Phocaean' corresponds in form to Recent Etr.
><larthiale hulchniesi> (TLE 84) and several Arch. Etr. dedicatory
>inscriptions.

On the other hand, Lemnian shows little or no trace of the ubiquitous
Etruscan 3rd.p. preterit ending -ce (there is <phoke>, but in view of
<Holaies'i Phokiasiale>, one can doubt whether this is a verb or a
reference to Phocaea), and it is in fact impossible to recognize any
verbal form in Lemnian (maybe -io ?).  The gap between <naphoth> and
<nefts> has already been commented on.  Neither <z> nor <f> occur in
this short fragment (and how would Lemnian have rendered <f>?), and
Etr. <u> (no <o>) is Lemnian <o> (no <u>) [this might merely be an
orthographic issue, in view of Morina=Murina].  Lemnian <mara> in the
formula <sialchvis' avis' maras'm avis'> must surely be a numeral, but
fits none of the Etruscan ones (the only one that comes even remotely
close is <mach> "5", a little bit closer [but still remote] if we
consider the derivative <muvalch> "50", showing that the -ch was not
part of the root, but probably identical to -c(h) "and" [cf. PIE
*pen-kwe "... and 5"], so something like *mawa-k(h) "[... and ]5",
*mawa-alkh "50").  In sum, I see little reason to think that Lemnian
differs only trivially from Etruscan, despite the fact that it is
clearly related to it.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From kcummings at iprimus.com.au  Thu Jan 18 01:17:45 2001
From: kcummings at iprimus.com.au (Katherine Cummings)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 12:17:45 +1100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs) Ref Hercle, Zimite
Message-ID: <THU.18.JAN.2001.121745.1100.>

Attic cognates in Etruscan

1
Herakles = Hercle

 Hercle is a mild profanity in the plays of TERENTIVS. This demotic form was
considered to derive, not from Lt HERCVLES, but from Gk Herakles,
Approximately, Godammit! / Bloody Hell!
 But is it Etruscan?
 Did Roman citizens of the mid-2nd BPE all swear in Etruscan?

2
<it may be that "Zimite" represents something like /(d?)zi:
<m. i te/, with something like syllabic /m./ as the second syllable,
<preserving the four syllables of the borrowed Greek word.

 Is there any known language which has intervocalic syllabic continuants? In
what way would this be different from a lengthened consonant:

/dzi:m:ite/
, as in Modern Italian
dimmi
/dim:i/
?
 This would lose the syllable count of the, er, borrowed Greek word.

But it's exactly the syllable count that is the first thing to go in borrowings
between languages, as borrowing alters the phonology. English schwah, uniformly
centralizing unstressed vowels, can effectively reduce

Peru to one syllable
Portugal to two
and Barcelona to three

. Just as epenthetic vowels in Brazilian Portuguese can make five syllables out
of Uzbequistao, with a tilde on the a, meaning Uzbekistan:
/uzibekistau/
, with the /a/ nasal.

 The last thing to expect from any borrowing is preservation of the syllable
count.

 The name of Diomedes as a warrior in the Mycenean force against Troy could
logically be billed as a borrowing from Gk into Et. Equally logically, though,
both forms could derive by descent or borrowing from an outside source. Crete
shows that names of Homer's heroes had been common coin. Is there evidence that
Homer's heroes had newly-minted names?

 Respects

Chester Graham
Chester at britanic-ih.com.br


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Sun Jan 21 06:30:22 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 06:30:22 -0000
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <SUN.21.JAN.2001.063022.0000.>

Pat Ryan (6 Jan 2001) wrote:

>Could you tell me the source for the opinion that Roma is derived from
>Etruscan Ruma? And what is it supposed to mean?

This opinion is brought to you by the
"can't-find-plausible-IE-cognates-so-it-must-be-Etruscan" school of Latin
etymology.

The Etruscan form Ruma is inferred from Cneve Tarchunies Rumach (equiv. to
Lat. Gnaeus Tarquinius Romanus), slain by the Vulcentine warrior Marce
Camitlnas as depicted in paintings from the "Francois" tomb of Vel Saties
(TLE 297-300; CIE 5266-75). There is also a gentilicium Rumate/Rumathe (CIE
1944,4883,4885) meaning 'from Rome'.

Ruma is most likely an adaptation of Roma, not the other way around.
Etruscan does not distinguish /o:u/ and generally uses U to replace O in
borrowed roots. On the other hand when native Etruscan names having U before
a single consonant in the root are borrowed into Latin, the U is retained
(e.g. Spurinna, Fusios/Furius). Hence if Ruma were Etruscan in origin, one
would expect Latin Ruma as well. The name Roma probably predates Etruscan
influence in the area and comes from some other source.

The most plausible conjecture for the meaning of Roma is 'ford, crossing',
since it was the most practical site for traffic between Etruria and Latium
to cross the Tiber. 'Bridge' is out, as there was no bridge here before the
Pons Sublicius, and there is no evidence that the city's name was changed
when the bridge was built.

DGK


From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Jan 15 22:13:26 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 16:13:26 -0600
Subject: Etruscan Deonyms
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.161326.0600.>

        I guess probably most of those wgod-names are manglings from Greek,
perhaps even "Aplu".  Still, I venture to wonder (having no etymological
dictionaries of any kind here to guide me) whether some of these etymologies
may not be specifically Greek rather than generally IE.  I have not been
able, in my somewhat pathetic efforts, to find "laos" outside of Greek, for
example, though it's probably out there, somewhere ...

Dr. David L. White


From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Jan 15 22:18:45 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 16:18:45 -0600
Subject: Greek Gods
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.161845.0600.>

>>I have heard that of the Greek gods only Zeus is IE.

> I wouldn't go that far - surely we have a few more

        Sorry.  The statement I was thinking of referred only to the major
(12?) gods of the pantheon.

Dr. David L. White


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Jan 16 03:19:21 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 21:19:21 -0600
Subject: Early Goths as Drinkers
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.211921.0600.>

        Harking back to an earlier emissive, I would like to know more about
how the name of the Goths is supposed to have been from two different agent
nouns, each from a different ablaut grade.
        It would also be good to know how the /o/ got there in Latin.  One
possibility is that the name (as it reached Latin) is indeed an "other-name"
from other Germanic, in which case /o/ rather than /u/ in a past-participle
of /geutan/ (more or less) would in fact be regular.  Or, to put it perhaps
more clearly, the from with /o/ would be the non-Gothic Germanic, whereas
the form with /u/ would be the Gothic version.  That the Greeks were in
contact with the Goths whereas the Romans were in contact with other
Germanic tribes might explain this difference, which as far as I can see has
no other explanation.

Dr. David L. White


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Jan 16 03:28:55 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 21:28:55 -0600
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.212855.0600.>

> From what I gather, feles was originally applied to a ferret, mongoose or
> other type of weasel. I like your ailouros etymology a lot more

    A truly minor point ...
    Mongooses (-geese?) are viverrids, not mustelids, and only one type of
viverrid, the genet (not mongoose) of Iberia (spreading recently to France
and even western Germany), occurs in Europe.  For the Romans to call a
mongoose a cat would have been more or less as for us to call skunks
'polecats' or a kind of racoon 'ringtail cats'.   Not that that stops us.
Speaking of deplorable, or understandable, vagueness in terms for animal, it
is within the realm of possibility the word for 'fox' and 'wolf' were not
originally distinguished, which would explain a few things.

Dr. David L. White


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Tue Jan 16 13:20:09 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 08:20:09 EST
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.082009.EST.>

In a message dated 1/15/2001 9:52:56 PM, rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:
<< Buck [1949: 181] suggests that Greek aie/louros, ai/louros "cat, marten,
ferret, weasel, etc." may be from aio/los "quick" + oura/: "tail" >>

Yes, but it's exactly the ferret connection to this and other cat words that
suggest the concept of the animals was functional rather than descriptive,
ferrets not looking a lot like cats except perhaps in size.

The tail idea also occurs in <skiouros> squirrel, interpreted as
'shadow-tail.'   But the shadow part <skio-) doesn't seem to make a lot of
sense.  (Perhaps, <skiros>, sometimes land overgrown with bushes, scrub.)

Without going into gory details, <aiolos/aioleo/aiolizo> also seems to refer
to the variegated or glistening pieces of clothing, embroidery, sheen, the
making of multi-colored garments, embellishments or adornments, like fur
collars; cf. <aiolomitres>, "glittering girdle",in Homer; multi-colored
turban; <allix>, man's upper garment.  However, <killouros> wagtail; <kolouro
s> stump-tailed.

There are a lot of Gr words that refer to snake or serpents, of course, with
similar forms, e.g., <molouros>, <ouraios>, and one wonders if 'tail' and
'snake' originally shared just a descriptive element or whether a common
function was involved.

Regards,
S. Long


From kastytis.beitas at gf.vu.lt  Wed Jan 17 05:51:18 2001
From: kastytis.beitas at gf.vu.lt (Kastytis Beitas)
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 06:51:18 +0100
Subject: cat < ?
In-Reply-To: <l03130339b68665772d0d@[209.147.211.22]>
Message-ID: <WED.17.JAN.2001.065118.0100.>

I can propose other possible origin for some 'non-cat' cat words.
I think it is a rather frequent case when predatory animal is named
according its prey.
For example, in Lithuanian:
peleda "owl"                   <--  pele "mous" + eda "to eat",
zhuvedra "tern on gull"  <--  zhuvis 'fish' + eda "to eat" (or edrus
"voracious")
In English:
polecat or polcat at 1320 "ferret" <-- Old French poule, pol "fowl, hen" + cat

It is semantically plausible that rodents names can be transformed to mouse
hunter's (cat's or some Mustellidae mammal's) name.
Similarity of motivation of these predator naming is seen in English
polecat "ferret; Mustella putorius".
And names of small rodents (and sometimes of shrew though shrew isn't a
rodent but is similar to mice) are related to words with meanings "to make
a hole; to peck etc". For example, Lithuanian kirstukas "shrew" <-- kirsti
"to hack, to cut" or English shrew (etymology unknown?) and to shred.
This relation is based on holes that are made by mices in pelts, clothes
etc. or shredding or chapping straw or similar material to small litter...
The part of semantic niche net is similar to this:

"cat" "marten" <-- "mouse"
                                   A
                                    |
  "to peck; to make hole; to hit etc" --> "to beat to pulp"
                             |
|
                            V
V
"to smash to parts, to make small"     "pulp; gruel etc; material of
similar consistence"

For example:
1. Latin  feles 'cat' reminds of Lithuanian pele 'mouse'. In Watkins
Dictionary of Indo-European Roots pel- means "to thrust, to strike".

>I suppose Hindi bhili "cat" would be too fortuitous to suggest a connection
>based on *bhil-, *bhel-?

2. Hindi bhili 'cat' <-> Russian bilo 'thing for beating', Eng. beat etc.
(maybe this bhili is cognate to Lithuanian pele)

> >In Latin, it is the ferret that gets the job of mouser by
> >name, <mustЙla> or <mustella>, indicating maybe that cats were not that
> >common early on.

3. So mustella 'marten' <-> Latin mus, English mouse, German Maus, Polish
mysz, Russian mysh'

Chernykh in his 'Historically-Etymological Dictionary of Modern Russian
Language' writes that Latin mus, Polish mysz, Russian mysh' may be origined
from IE word with meanings "plunderer, spoiler". Chernykh states that mus
and mysh' are cognates with Russian mukha 'fly' /and Latin musca 'fly'/.
This comparison of mouse anf fly supports my hypothesis, because other
possible meaning for 'fly-words' is a "bitter; one who bites". This fits to
"bee-words" too: in Lithuanian bite "bee" etc. Armenian muk 'mouse' is
similar to Russian muka "flour; what is grinded' and Russian muka
"suffering"...

English mouse and German Maus are similar to Russian musor "debris;
litter". Chernykh states that musor is cognate with Russian musolit'
"slabber, slaver" and both them are originated from IE *meu-, *mou- "damp,
moist" and "liquid dirt; mud". But this cognateness is between musor and
mud, moist is more distant in my opinion: musor is originated as "litter,
produced by chapping (or by mice?)"...

>Someone, maybe Partridge 1958, links feles to Latin meles "badger"

4. Latin meles "badger" <-> words with meanings 'to grind; to transfor to
small parts'
English mill
Lithuanian male is past tense verb with meaning 'grind, mill' (but
Lithuanian meleta means a few species of woodpecker)
Russian melet 'to mill (present tense)', molot 'hammer'

> >Gr <kassuo:>, Att. <kattuo:>, to sew, to stitch together like a shoemaker.
> ><kattus>, a piece of leather (or animal skin.)  <katateino:>, stretch, draw
> >tigth, especially a cord or strip of animal skin.  Perhaps this is somehow
> >the source of "catgut", for which I haven't seen a decent explanation.
> >(Attested is a Persian or Babylonian fur prepared from mouse skins,
> ><gaunacum> or <kaunakЙ>, so anything was possible.)

So there is some basis to state that this all-Indo-European word cat in all
its variations may by descendant of some Indo-European root with meaning
"to hit, to strike, to make hole etc". Distant cognate of this hypothetical
(?) root may be Watkins's kat- "to fight" and kat- "down".

May be distant relatives of this are Lithuanian kietas and Latvian ciets
"hard (vs. soft)".

Or cut in Chambers Dictionary of Etymology:
,,Probably before 1300 either as: cutten <...>, kitten <...>; of uncertain
orrigin (possibly borrowed from  Scandinavian source; compare Swedish
dialect kuta, kata "to cut", kuta "knife", and Icelandic kuti "knife". ''

This excerpt from Chambers Dict.of Etym. reminds on my old posting (Lith.
peilis "knife" <-> Lith. pele "mous"):

 >The similar case is with Lithuanian "peilis" 'knife'. It is similar to
 >Russian "pila" 'saw', Lat. "pilum" 'heavy javelin, pestle', OHG "pfil"
'>arrow, stake'.
 >In this context OE "pil" 'stake, shaft, spike' and Eng "pile" 'arrow, dart'
 >may be not borrowings as it is stated in Chambers Dict. of Etym. ( p.794)]
 >but words of common Indo-European origin.

So distant relativeof English cat or Lithuanian kate "male cat" or Russian
kot "male cat" may be English kettle, Lithuanian katilas "kettle":
In Chambers Dict.of Etym.:

,,kettle -- <...> borrowed directly from Latin catillus "small bowl, dish
or plate", diminutive of catinus "bowl, dish, pot"; perhaps cognate with
Greek kotyle "small vessel, cup" <...>. ''

Hypothetical chain of semantic changes from kettle to cat:
cat "hunter of mouse" <-> ?? "who makes holes" <-> "to strike" <-> "to
hollow out" <-> "vessel, plate, cup, made by hollowing" <-> "kettle".

**********************************
Kastytis Beitas
----------------------------------
Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics
Faculty of Natural Sciences
Vilnius University
Ciurlionio 21
Vilnius 2009, Lithuania
----------------------------------
Fax:     (370 2)235409
E-Mail:  kastytis.beitas at gf.vu.lt
**********************************


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Jan 16 03:33:07 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 21:33:07 -0600
Subject: Origin of Cats
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.213307.0600.>

> Do domestic cats only descend from North African cats? Or did they
> also interbreed with various species of small local wildcats?

        Not various species, as 1) the African wildcat, 2) the European
wildcat, and 3) the domestic cat are all these days considered sub-species
of a single species. A little genetic inflow from European wild cats would,
I think, have been virtually inevitable, though perhaps there is something
in the genetic information supplied by others that contradicts this.

Dr. David L. White


From r.clark at auckland.ac.nz  Tue Jan 16 04:29:01 2001
From: r.clark at auckland.ac.nz (Ross Clark (FOA LING))
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 17:29:01 +1300
Subject: Calcutta/Kolkatta
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.172901.1300.>

Can you explain exactly what sorts of phonological difficulties "Kolkatta",
"Mumbai", "Chennai" or "Basu" would have presented for "early Brits"?

Ross Clark

-----Original Message-----
From: Shilpi Misty Bhadra [mailto:evenstar at mail.utexas.edu]
Sent: Saturday, 13 January 2001 10:39 a.m.

[ moderator snip ]

Calcutta is now Kolkatta in the latest Indian news. Mumbai has been around
for a long time, as Chennai for Madras. The early Brits had a hard time
with pronouncing Indian names, although they didn't to have much trouble
with Delhi (which hasn't changed). ;) My family is from Calcutta/Kolkatta.
My mother's maiden name was Basu, but changed to Bose, because it would be
easier for the Brits to pronounce. But she hasn't changed her maiden name
spelling ... yet! ;)


From rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu  Wed Jan 17 13:10:55 2001
From: rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu (rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu)
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 08:10:55 -0500
Subject: Calcutta/Kolkatta
Message-ID: <WED.17.JAN.2001.081055.0500.>

[ moderator edited ]

>Calcutta is now Kolkatta in the latest Indian news. Mumbai has been around
>for a long time, as Chennai for Madras. The early Brits had a hard time
>with pronouncing Indian names, although they didn't to have much trouble
>with Delhi (which hasn't changed). ;) My family is from Calcutta/Kolkatta.
>My mother's maiden name was Basu, but changed to Bose, because it would be
>easier for the Brits to pronounce. But she hasn't changed her maiden name
>spelling ... yet! ;)
>
>Shilpi Misty Bhadra

The problematic nature of these exercises is well illustrated by
Shilpi's transcription of the new name as Kolkatta.  While her double
't' is more (though hardly completely) faithful to the Bengali
pronunciation, it's wrong.  The new 'official' name is 'Kolkata'.

Transcribing it in what many see (wrongly) as India's 'national'
language would give something closer to 'Kalkatta'.  But, since there
is no good mapping of the sounds of Indian languages to a Roman
alphabet that is in general use for writing (other than in a few
specialised applications, like the names of Hindi films), no
solution based on a Roman alphabet will work.

I think it is therefore an extreme oversimplification, Shilpi, to say
that this is a matter of Brits having trouble with Indian names.  They
certainly did, but Indians have as much trouble with Indian names; I
have yet to meet an Indian non-Bengali-speaker who uses an 'o' instead
of an 'a' in the first syllable of Calcutta (however spelt).

I have tried (and failed) to understand why changing the 'official'
English version is such an issue in India.  It definitely has
something to do with the unique linguistic/political status of English
in South Asia, and probably with some national insecurities tied in to
that.  After all, you don't see the the Russians agitating for Moscow
to be changed to Moskva, the Poles for Warsaw to be changed to
Varshava, or the Italians for Rome to be changed to Roma.  In those
cases, I believe, the authoritative and official version is regarded
as the the one in the local language and script, and all other
versions in foreign languages are accepted as convenience dictates.

But, for Calcutta, declaring that the official name will be the city's
name as written in the Bengali (sorry, Bangla) script is not an option
because the Central government would never accept the precedent.  Nor
is declaring it the name as written in Hindi in the Devanagari script,
because the Bengalis would never accept that.  Hence the
unsatisfactory compromise of Kolkata.

Most Indians had never heard of Chennai before the name was changed,
and the majority of non-Maharashtrians do not seem to use the name
'Mumbai' to this day.  (Also, Punjabis generally refer to all South
Indians as 'Madrasis', a perfectly reasonable nomenclature derived
from the time when most of South India was part of the Madras
Presidency, and Chennai is very unlikely to make much headway against
this).

Finally, the Brits quite certainly did have trouble with Delhi, which
is the only city in India that could make a good case for a reversion,
precisely because it was the only one of the four (Bangalore being a
recent upstart) that became a metropolis before and without British
occupation.  (Calcutta, Madras and Bombay were all 'greenfield'
developments by the British -- there was nothing there before the
development of British factories and administrative capitals, to say
nothing of the security offered to traders by British arms -- it is
not a coincidence that Bombay eclipsed Surat precisely at the time
when the Mughals were no longer there to defend the latter city, which
was twice sacked by Shivaji).  The old pronunciation of Delhi could be
roughly transcribed 'Dehli' (Urdu poets from Delhi would take the name
Dehlavi); this pronunciation, I can report, is still the standard one
in use by West Punjabis.  The new one in Indian languages is more like
'Dilli' (or Dylli).

As an aside, Shilpi, the Bengalis really don't have much of a case
against the British for being unable to pronounce 'Basu' (or
'Chattopadhyay'), considering that most Bengalis still refer to Sikhs
as "Shiks".

Sorry, this is probably more appropriate for an Indology list, though
the languages are all certainly Indo-European.

:)

cheers,
Rohan.


From connolly at memphis.edu  Mon Jan 15 22:59:27 2001
From: connolly at memphis.edu (Leo A. Connolly)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 22:59:27 +0000
Subject: la leche (was: Re: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro..)..
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.225927.0000.>

> Leo Connolly wrote:

> >The larger question is why we have _leche_ (as well as It. _latte_, Fr.
> >_lait_ when there was no **_lactem_ so long as the word was neuter.  But if
> >_lactem_ developed, then gender reassignment would be a must, and formally
> >there would have been no reason to choose masculine over feminine.  Why
> >shouldn't a product of the female breast become feminine?  If anything, it's
> >the masculine forms that need explaining.

> Diogo Almeida wrote:

> I'm no specialist and I don't know what was the vulgar latin or the early
> romance word for milk on the Peninsula at that time, but my latin dictionary
> gives "lacte, is" for milk (and "lac" as an archaic form). I think that
> "lactem" then, would have been the accusative form (I have to rely on my
> memory, though, since I don't have any Latin grammar with me :) ).
> Portuguese, as a general rule, got the accusative form of latin words. So
> "lactem" being the accusative, it seems likely that the word in Portuguese
> developed from that form (I don't have an etymological dictionary with me,
> though). And since neuter was absorbed by the masculine gender in general
> (at least in Portuguese, I don't know about Spanish), i don't see any
> problems with "leite" being masculine. On the other hand, "leche" as
> feminine is strange to me, especially because Portuguese and Spanish
> normally agree when it comes to the gender of the words.

I'm no specialist either (Germanic philology is my thing, at least officially).
But my Latin dictionary (an old Cassell's from the 1930s) lists only _lac_, not
_lacte_.  Still, it is conceivable that _lacte_ arose in Vulgar Latin, and it
would be a perfectly good ancestor of _leche_ et al.

Connolly again:

    >"formally there would have been no reason to choose masculine over
feminine.

> >Why shouldn't a product of the female breast become feminine?  If anything,
> >it's the masculine forms that need explaining."

Diogo again:

> If the gender systems of Portuguese and Spanish were mainly semantically
> driven, maybe. But they aren't. There is a strong formal element in gender
> assingment in these languages. And as I said before, I think that neuter
> words become masculine in Portuguese most of the time (and I guess this is
> also true for Spanish).

Well, yes -- the point is that in the Latin third declension, masculine and
feminine forms are normally indistinguishable, so that the word for 'forehead'
is _frons, frontis_ (feminine) and for 'mountain' _mons, montis_ (masculine).
The reason why Latin neuters usually become masculine in  Romance is that most
belong to the second declension, otherwise the home of many masculine nouns and
only a few feminines, from which they differed only in the nominative singular
and nominative accusative plural.  There were no first-declension neuters, so
they had no particular to turn feminine along with most of the rest of that
declension.  Some third-declension neuters ended up *looking* masculine:
_corpus_ 'body' looked suspiciously like a second-declension masculine
nominative, so it is no surprise to find Spanish _cuerpo_ masculine rather than
feminine.  But there were no third-declension neuters that *looked* feminine.
Still, I had no trouble finding one that is now feminine in Spanish: _u:ber_
(gen. _u:beris_) 'udder, teat, breat' has yielded _la ubre_ 'udder'.  Are we
surprised?  We shouldn't be, just as we are not surprised that the formally
ambiguous Latin _penis_ is masculine rather than feminine.

This from a non-specialist.  What do the experts say?

Leo

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email;internet:connolly at memphis.edu
x-mozilla-cpt:;1
fn:Leo A. Connolly
end:vcard


From edsel at glo.be  Tue Jan 16 12:23:06 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 13:23:06 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.132306.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2001 12:19 PM

[snip]
> 3 of the 4 possible variations of /a:e/
> correspondence are found in presumed substratal words:

>   Lat. cerrus, It. cerro, Sp. carrasco 'holm-oak'
>   Lat. larix, It. larice, Sp. alerce 'larch'
>   Lat. betula, It. betulla, Sp. abedul 'birch'
>   It. cheppia, Sp. sa'balo, saboga, saboca 'shad'

> These are practically the only examples I have, so I don't know whether the
> vowel-alternation and prosthetic /a/ are strictly determined by phonetic
> environment.
[snip]
> DGK

[Ed]

In the case of Castilian you have to take into account the Arab influence:
sometimes words of Romance origin were adopted by the Spanish-Arab population
and then got back into Castilian in their arabicized form, often with the
definite article al- (and its alternate forms, depending on the assimilation of
the initial "sun" consonant of the following word) attached to it. <alerche> is
such a case: actually <al-lerce>, possibly via some Arabic form **al-lars vel
sim..  <abedul> is possibly a simplification of *al-bedul (no assimilation: b
is a "moon" letter). I don't think these a's are prosthetic/epenthetic like the
e of <especial>.

Note also that Arabic has not really a vowel /e/, except in some regional
speech, nor /o/. In the transition to Spanish, the Arabic vowels often undergo
surprising changes, or are added. Examples: <alcázar> from Lat. castra, via
al-kasr. Cast. Alicante from Lat. Lucentum, via al-(lu)kant, but in Catalan:
Alacant; it is pretty strange that Lat. c suvived as /k/, since the Arabs came
there (713 A.D.) after the palatalization of Lat. c (unless some regional
peculiarity intervened, like an early dialectal /e/ > /a/, or maybe the Iberian
name that served as a substrate to Latin had an /a/ - I really don't know).

<Carrasco> has all the characteristics of a somewhat complicated origin: it is
almost certainly a compound, with the suffix -(V)sco, which can be IE but just
as well Iberian or Basque, even though that wouldn't affect its meaning. I
would guess that the Latin form is derived from a substrate word with /a/. The
Spanish word cannot possibly be derived directly from the late-Latin form,
because the Latin c would have become /T/ (English th), not /k/ [In Sp. cerro
means 'small mountain, hill']. On the other hand, no such objection exists for
It. cerro.  Could <carrasco> and Lat. cerrus /kerrus/ be related to a pre-IE
root and/or Celtic, for a certain type of mountain landscape? In such case, the
suffix -sko would make a lot of sense. Just a thought.

Ed. Selleslagh


From miskec4096 at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 16 21:25:15 2001
From: miskec4096 at hotmail.com (Kreso Megyeral)
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 22:25:15 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.222515.0100.>

>I'm no specialist and I don't know what was the vulgar latin or the early
>romance word for milk on the Peninsula at that time, but my latin dictionary
>gives "lacte, is" for milk (and "lac" as an archaic form). I think that
>"lactem" then, would have been the accusative form (I have to rely on my
>memory, though, since I don't have any Latin grammar with me :) ).

It can't, since all the nouns ending on -e are still neuter in Latin.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Tue Jan 16 21:54:49 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 16:54:49 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
In-Reply-To: <F33zgH7zCEWHNBMA58S00018d1d@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.165449.0500.>

[snip]
>>[RMCC]
>>	[snip] re: Spanish sabueso "bloodhound" [snip]

>I would guess directly from substrate. Otherwise the /a/ of the first
>syllable is also hard to derive from Latin /e/. The first "u" of segusius is
>presumed long on the basis of "grecizzato" egousia, which I neglected to
>mention in my posting. 3 of the 4 possible variations of /a:e/
>correspondence are found in presumed substratal words:

>  Lat. cerrus, It. cerro, Sp. carrasco 'holm-oak'
>  Lat. larix, It. larice, Sp. alerce 'larch'
>  Lat. betula, It. betulla, Sp. abedul 'birch'
>  It. cheppia, Sp. sa'balo, saboga, saboca 'shad'

carrasco is a real can of worms
It resembles Latin quercus "oak" and various *garr-, *karr- words for
"hard" enough to fire people up but the clues are complicated.

also Spanish la/rice for "larch"
I'm guessing that both alerce and abedul are via Mozarabic
Here's what I've found on "larch"
lárice, alerce "larch"

	< Latin larix, larice (f., m.) "mélèze", "resin de mélèze"
[Ernout & Meillet 1939: 524; Migliorini 1966: 60]
	< Latin larix, laricem (acc.) "larch" [Partridge 1958: 337]
	< ? Alpine language, Celtic? [Ernout & Meillet 1939: 524]
	< larik- [Partridge 1958: 337]
	< Celtic, Alpine language [Partridge 1958: 337]
	see German Lärche, MHG lerche < Latin [Partridge 1958: 337]

I'd expect something like *bedoja or *bedolla as cognate to Italian betulla
or maybe *bedola from Latin *betula (with short /i/)

Here's what Corominas has to say re: Spanish sa/balo
sa/balo "shad"
	c. 1330 [Corominas 1980]
	savalus 961 [Corominas 1980]
	see Portuguese sável 1223; Catalan & Aragonese savoga 1335, saboca
[Corominas 1980]
	< ? Celtic samos "summer" [Corominas 1980]
	< *sabolos [Corominas 1980]
	< *sabauca [Corominas 1980]
	< samauca; -m- > -b- typical of Celtic [Corominas 1980]
	< ? Great Britain [Corominas 1980]
Italian cheppia definitely looks out of place in regard to Corominas's entry

	If they came into Spanish via Mozarabic, the vowels may have been
affected by the Arabic vowel system. But someone more versed in Mozarabic
would have to confirm [or deny] that.

[snip]
>>	So Alessio proposed the Lusitanians = "IE Ligurians" = Illyrians
>>hypothesis? By "IE Ligurians", I mean the non-Celtic, non-Italic IE
>>speakers of N Italy & S France
>>	I've also seen claims that the Sikani themselves were Ligurians
>>based on toponymic similarities between names in Sicily and Liguria

	The IE vs. non-IE "Ligurians" are a headache. I liked Corominas's
use of Sorotaptic but does anyone else use it?

[snip]

	I think Pallottini equated non-Celtic, non-Italic IE-speakers with
"Ligurians" back in the 30s or 40s

>In my own humble view, the Siculi probably represent the first wave of
>IE-speakers into Italy, responsible for forms in which PIE medial *dh has
>become /t/ (Aitne/Aetna, Rutuli, Liternum/Leuternon, and probably the source
>of Etr. lautni 'freedman'). Thucydides (VI.2.4) says there were still some
>Siculi in Italy in his time. The Sicani claimed to be Iberians, but if this
>term is understood geographically, they might be identifiable with the
>non-Celtic, non-Italic IE-speakers of Liguria, and their later migration to
>Sicily might explain the similarity of toponyms.
[snip]

>DGK

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


From miskec4096 at hotmail.com  Wed Jan 17 23:10:10 2001
From: miskec4096 at hotmail.com (Kreso Megyeral)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 00:10:10 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <THU.18.JAN.2001.001010.0100.>

Rick McAllister wrote:
>How common is this phenomenon in other Romance
>languages and other other languages with grammatical gender?

Interesting thing with disappearing of Latin neuter nouns happens in
Romanian. Romanian actually has neuter gender, but in singular forms it's
equal to masculine, while in plural to feminine. Even the definite article,
which is postpositive in Romanian, doesn't have its own form, but follows
the same pattern.

In one Spanish grammar written in Croatian I found that there are still some
words in Spanish considered neuter (of course, not "leche") that express
collectives or some young animals. The article quoted is LO. Is it indeed,
or is it some interpretation of the author?


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Sun Jan 21 03:54:24 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 03:54:24 -0000
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <SUN.21.JAN.2001.035424.0000.>

Leo A. Connolly (10 Jan 2001) wrote:

>The larger question is why we have _leche_ (as well as It. _latte_, Fr. _lait_
>when there was no **_lactem_ so long as the word was neuter.  But if _lactem_
>developed, then gender reassignment would be a must, and formally there would
>have been no reason to choose masculine over feminine.  Why shouldn't a
>product of the female breast become feminine?  If anything, it's the masculine
>forms that need explaining.

Some brief comments: First, *lactem is not required to explain the /t/ in
the Romance forms. Varro used the neuter <lact>: lactuca [dicitur] a lacte,
quod holus id habet lact (L.L. V.21.3). Caesar reputedly scoffed at <lact>
on the grounds that no Latin word could end in two stops, but it is
reasonable that <lact> was the form in common use while <lac> belonged
strictly to the urban dialect of Rome.

Second, if the word for 'milk' had been de-neutered to *lactis, it would
have had the same form as the established word for 'intestine': ita cibi
vacivitate venio lassis lactibus (Plaut. Curc. 319); fundolum a fundo, quod
non ut reliquae lactes, sed ex una parte sola apertum (Varr. L.L. V.22.7).

Third, terms denoting products, attributes, or appendages of a particular
"natural" gender which carry a different "grammatical" gender are too
numerous to list here (and some are inappropriate for general audiences).

DGK


From anthony.appleyard at UMIST.AC.UK  Fri Jan 19 08:41:41 2001
From: anthony.appleyard at UMIST.AC.UK (anthony.appleyard@umist.ac.uk)
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 03:41:41 -0500
Subject: Pre-PIE as a PIE substrate?
Message-ID: <FRI.19.JAN.2001.034141.0500.>

On Mon, 6 Nov 2000 18:44:37 +0200, Ante Aikio <anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi>
wrote:

> However, there are lexical correspondences between western Uralic and
> Germanic which have no further etymologies in either language family, e.g.
>   Germ. *saiwa- ~ Samic *saajvê 'fresh water',
>   Finnic *kauka- 'long' ~ Germ. *hauha- 'high',
>   Germ. *ailda- 'fire' ~ Samic *aaltê-nkê-ssê 'lightning'.
> But all of these can be explained as borrowings in one direction or the
> other, so there is no special reason to asssume separate borrowing from
> some substrate language in these cases.

Please where can I find a complete list of these words which are found in
both Germanic and western Uralic?

Someone said in gothic-l at egroups.com that archaeologies ancestral to the
modern South Saami (= Lappish) culture have been found in all of Scandinavia
dand as far south as Hamburg in Germany. If so, then perhaps in South Saamic
we have a living descendant of one of the many aboriginal substratum
languages that incoming Indo-European overrode so long ago, and the above
words and their like are pre-IE substratum words. If Finno-Ugrian languages
were once spoken in all Scandinavia and Denmark and a long way into
Schleswig-Holstein, then their speakers in those southern areas would have
changed from tundra hunters to a denser population and more settled mode of
life as the climate got warmer as the Ice Age ended and then farming and
livestock herding came in. That increases the chance that Germanic started
as Indo-European spoken with a "south coast of the Baltic" type Finno-Ugrian
accent. That might also explain peculiar Germanic features such as weak-type
adjectives declining different from 1st and 2nd declension nouns.

Perhaps also, Balto-Slavonic (Lithuanian etc) started as IE spoken with a
"south-east coast of the Baltic" Finno-Ugrian accent; Estonian and Livonian
would be the nearest living relatives of that area's pre-IE substratum.


From mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk  Tue Jan 23 08:37:37 2001
From: mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk (Anthony Appleyard)
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 08:37:37 GMT
Subject: words specific to Saamic /  Finnish and Germanic
Message-ID: <TUE.23.JAN.2001.083737.GMT.>

 On Fri, 3 Nov 2000, Rick Mc Callister wrote:
 >       Does any of this substrate overlap with the so-called "Baltic"
 > substrate in Germanic; i.e. words of non-IE, non-Uralic origin such as
 > ship, sea, seal (animal), etc.?

English "ship", Germanic "skip-", seems to have a relative in Greek: {skaphos}.
Also, Greek {skapto:} = "I dig"; the connection is likely via dugout canoes
(made by hollowing out a big single log).

  Ante Aikio <anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi> wrote on Mon 6 Nov 2000 at
18:44:37 +0200 (Subject: Re: Pre-PIE as a PIE substrate?):-

> However, there are lexical correspondences between western Uralic and
> Germanic which have no further etymologies in either language family, e.g.
> Germ. *saiwa- ~ Samic *saajvê 'fresh water',
> Finnic *kauka- 'long' ~ Germ. *hauha- 'high',
> Germ. *ailda- 'fire' ~ Samic *aaltê-nkê-ssê 'lightning'. ...

Please where can I get a complete list of these "Germanic and Finno-Ugrian
only" words?

Someone on Gothic-L says that archaeology which is a lineal ancestor of modern
Saamic (= Lappish) has been found as far south as Hamburg in Germany. If this
means that an ancestor of Saamic was once spoken in all Scandinavia and Denmark
and well into Schleswig-Holstein, then Germanic could have started as IE spoken
with a Saami accent even if it developed south of the Baltic Sea.


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 23 20:04:06 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 20:04:06 -0000
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
Message-ID: <TUE.23.JAN.2001.200406.0000.>

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (10 Jan 2001) wrote:

>[DGK]
> >I would add the tail-end of "five"; Goth. <fimf> suggests Early PIE *pempwe.

>[MCV]
>It would be a candidate, were it not that I rather like the idea of
>*pen-kwe "...and five" (an etymology similar to that of "ampersand").

[DGK]
If the second syllable is indeed the enclitic 'and', the first syllable is
more likely in my opinion to be 'one', with a "full hand" of four (*oktom?)
understood.

I still think *pempwe is a better fit for Early PIE. Otherwise the Germanic
forms require an ad-hoc assimilation of *p__kw__ to *p__p__ mirroring the
Italo-Celtic assimilation to *kw__kw__. But if this happened, why wasn't
*perkw- affected (Lat. quercus, OE fyrh, OHG forha)? We don't have
*firf-trees.

Is there any objection to *-kwe coming from *-pwe? Does this enclitic appear
in Hittite?


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu Jan 25 15:38:16 2001
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 16:38:16 +0100
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
In-Reply-To: <F110M9JkaELLdpXshN400000efe@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.163816.0100.>

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Douglas G Kilday wrote:

> I still think *pempwe is a better fit for Early PIE. Otherwise the Germanic
> forms require an ad-hoc assimilation of *p__kw__ to *p__p__ mirroring the
> Italo-Celtic assimilation to *kw__kw__. But if this happened, why wasn't
> *perkw- affected (Lat. quercus, OE fyrh, OHG forha)? We don't have
> *firf-trees.

> Is there any objection to *-kwe coming from *-pwe? Does this enclitic appear
> in Hittite?

Hitt. has (at least) kuis-ki 'every' = Lat. quis-que, cf. Luvian kuis-ha
(-ha 'and'; also Lycian tise : se 'and'). Whatever the full history, the
protoform must have contained a velar element in the enclitic part.

The story of Germanic *fimf is different from *pen{kw}e > Italo-Celtic
*{kw}en{kw}e and *pe{kw}- > *{kw}e{kw}-. The Germanic event is restricted
to the one word 'five' which of course follows 'four' in counting, this
giving the array *xw-{th}w--f-xw in which the xw's changed to f, no doubt
by assimilation, given the nature of [f] as something very close to a
"rounded thorn".

Jens


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan 25 16:11:07 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 10:11:07 -0600
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.101107.0600.>

> I still think *pempwe is a better fit for Early PIE. Otherwise the Germanic
> forms require an ad-hoc assimilation of *p__kw__ to *p__p__ mirroring the
> Italo-Celtic assimilation to *kw__kw__. But if this happened, why wasn't
> *perkw- affected (Lat. quercus, OE fyrh, OHG forha)? We don't have
> *firf-trees.

        What about Greek /pente/ and Sanskrit /panca/, which do indeed seem
to contain  the respective reflexes of PIE /que/ (more or less) meaning
'and'?
        As for the non-existence of "firf" trees, all I can suggest is that
numbers are sometimes subject to processes (mostly analogical) that do not
affect ordinary words.  In this case, the "sing-song" rhythm of counting may
have encouraged something not unlike reduplication (or internal
alliteration).   (/ini, mini, maini, mo/).

Dr. David L. White


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu Jan 25 17:42:52 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 18:42:52 +0100
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
In-Reply-To: <F110M9JkaELLdpXshN400000efe@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.184252.0100.>

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001 20:04:06 -0000, "Douglas G Kilday"
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

>I still think *pempwe is a better fit for Early PIE. Otherwise the Germanic
>forms require an ad-hoc assimilation of *p__kw__ to *p__p__ mirroring the
>Italo-Celtic assimilation to *kw__kw__. But if this happened, why wasn't
>*perkw- affected (Lat. quercus, OE fyrh, OHG forha)? We don't have
>*firf-trees.

>Is there any objection to *-kwe coming from *-pwe? Does this enclitic appear
>in Hittite?

If we assume, as is reasonable, that it's the same suffix: Hitt.
kuiski "whosoever", Goth. hwaz-uh/hwo:-h/hwa-h, Lat. quisque.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 25 18:23:02 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 19:23:02 +0100
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.192302.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 9:04 PM

> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (10 Jan 2001) wrote:

>> [DGK]
>>> I would add the tail-end of "five"; Goth. <fimf> suggests Early PIE
>>> *pempwe.

>> [MCV]
>> It would be a candidate, were it not that I rather like the idea of *pen-kwe
>> "...and five" (an etymology similar to that of "ampersand").

> [DGK]

> If the second syllable is indeed the enclitic 'and', the first syllable is
> more likely in my opinion to be 'one', with a "full hand" of four (*oktom?)
> understood.

[Ed]
Why not 'and [a] thumb'?

> I still think *pempwe is a better fit for Early PIE. Otherwise the Germanic
> forms require an ad-hoc assimilation of *p__kw__ to *p__p__ mirroring the
> Italo-Celtic assimilation to *kw__kw__. But if this happened, why wasn't
> *perkw- affected (Lat. quercus, OE fyrh, OHG forha)? We don't have
> *firf-trees.

[Ed]
In P-Italic you have p_p_('pompe'). On the other hand, not all Germanic has
f_f_: Swedish 'femt', mirroring Greek 'pente' (NGr. 'pende'), where t < *kw. As
a non-specialist, I'm really confused. Help!

Ed Selleslagh


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Sat Jan 27 13:54:31 2001
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2001 07:54:31 -0600
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
In-Reply-To: <F110M9JkaELLdpXshN400000efe@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.27.JAN.2001.075431.0600.>

[ moderator snip ]

>Is there any objection to *-kwe coming from *-pwe? Does this enclitic appear
>in Hittite?

*-kwe appears in Hittite as the suffix  -ku ... -ku   'whether ... or'.

Carol Justus


From hwhatting at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 30 12:03:16 2001
From: hwhatting at hotmail.com (Hans-Werner Hatting)
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 13:03:16 +0100
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
Message-ID: <TUE.30.JAN.2001.130316.0100.>

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001 20:04:06 -0000 Douglas G Kilday wrote:

>I still think *pempwe is a better fit for Early PIE. Otherwise the Germanic
>forms require an ad-hoc assimilation of *p__kw__ to *p__p__ mirroring the
>Italo-Celtic assimilation to *kw__kw__. But if this happened, why wasn't
>*perkw- affected (Lat. quercus, OE fyrh, OHG forha)? We don't have
>*firf-trees.

>From the reflexes in IE languages I can remember offhand, Indo-Iranian,
Greek, q-Italic, and q-Celtic require a PIE */kw/. Of course, one can
operate with different stages of PIE to account for irregularities, to unite
forms which seem to belong together, or to establish links to other language
families. But in the case of "5", we do not really need a Pre-PIE */pw/. To
me, the assimilation theory looks satisfyingly convincing, and we have the
correspondent assimilation (only the other way round) in Latin and q-Celtic.
And assimilations are often singular items, not being consequently applied
to all the material in a language.

Anyway, the proposed sound change **/pw/ > */kw/ looks unusual to me. We
have a lot of /kw/ > /p/ in IE languages, but does anybody know of instances
(except assimilation) for the change proposed by Douglas Kilday?
A further argument for an old /kw/ is the nasal. By PIE phonological rules,
we would expect /m/ before /p/. But the Gmc. languages have mostly the
reflexes of /n/, which is possible before labiovelars like /kw/ (probably
being realised as (ng)), but not before true labials. Later occurences of
/m/ in Gmc. languages can be easily explained as assimilations.

DGK:
>Is there any objection to *-kwe coming from *-pwe?

If You don4t accept Gmc. /f/ out of */kw/, but retract all instances of it
to a */pw/, You cannot link the second element of "5" with the eclitic PIE
*-kwe, as it is conserved in Gmc. as Gothic _-uh_, so it should contain PIE
/kw/ even in Your model.

For my part, I think it4s simpler to assume that the reflexes of PIE /kw/
occasionally merged with those of /p/ in some stage of Proto-Gmc.
under the influence of labial consonants in the same word.

Best regards,
Hans-Werner Hatting


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan 25 17:34:55 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 11:34:55 -0600
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.113455.0600.>

 The argument that the Lemnians were from Etruria is convincing only if we
disregard one principle and three facts.  The principle is that shared
archaisms are not indicative of close connection.  To make it clear why this is
so, let us imagine that we have three groups, A-B-C, arrayed in approximately
that geographic order.  If group B then innovates away from groups A and C,
leaving these with (relatively) archaic features in common, then failure to
recognize the validity of the principle just given will result in the belief
that A and C share some close connection, when they do not.  I cannot resist
(re-)noting that the principle applies to living things as much as to languages
(and alphabets).  For example, recent opinion inclines toward the view that the
stripes of zebras are an archaism, that at some point in the past all equids
had stripes.  If this is so, then zebras (there are at least three species) do
not form a sub-group within equids, and are not to be connected with each
other.  The principle is therefore valid in a manner that might be called
"modality independent".

 The three facts are that 1) the use of a zig-zag sibilant, 2) the use of
"H" as a fricative, and 3) the use of vau (or anything) for /w/ are all
archaisms.  (The use of a psi-shaped sign for "chi" may well be too, I don't
know.)  The use of a zig-zag sign for a sibilant (apparently /ts/) appears
also in Mantinean, where to my knowledge nobody connects it with influence
from Italy, or even Euboea.  It is simply an archaism, due largely to
Mantinea's somewhat isolated position in the interior of the Peloponessus.
The innovations noted were all characteristic of what might be called Aegean
Greek, and there is no reason to think that they should have made it across
the language boundary into Lemnian, anymore than that they should have made
it into Italian Greek or Mantinean.   They are also too late to have much to
do with a posited migration from the Aegean (or its eastern coast) to Italy.
The Phrygians and the Trojans (or their displaced descendants) belong to
significantly different periods of NW Anatolian history, and there is little
reason to think that their alphabets would have showed any especially close
relation.  In any event, as MCV notes, the attempt to argue that because the
alphabet is Euboean it must be Italian is more than a little strained to
begin with.

 Furthermore, the view presented totally ignores the presence of the
Turshas, who seem to bear the same name as the Tursenoi, raiding in the Nile
Delta (and perhaps under the name Philistines similarly distresing the
Hebrews) during the Aegean Dark Ages, roughly 1200-800.  I have not exactly
memorized Egyptian historical records, but I think they rule out the
possibility that the Turshas were the descendants of Italian colonizers of
Lemnos about 600, and it is scarcely likely that true Tuscans were raiding
the Eastern Mediterranean at any period.  Under the view presented, the time
and place of the Turshas do not match up, for if one is right the other is
wrong, so that we are left with little alternative but to deny that there is
any connection between the names.

 The seemingly Italian features in Lemnian could be due, as MCV suggests, to
independent influences.  The change of /pt/ to /ft/ is fairly natural (is is
known from Icelandic) and could have occurred in virtually any IE language.
Likewise feminine /i/ is known from both Greek and Sanskrit, and so is
hardly a reliable indicator of Italian provenance.  Nonetheless, I would
guess that in this case the things noted are borrowing from Italian Etruscan
into Lemnian, due to continuned contact between colonies and "mother-city"
of a sort well-attested from this period. The Greek colonies generally made
a point of keeping in contact with their mother cities, and so did Carthage.
There is no reason to think that Lemnian (or "Turshan") colonies in Italy
would not have done the same.  In other words, just as with modern British
and American English, it is not necessarily the case that true separation
has occurred, and borrowings might well have jumped the gap.  It is a little
odd that a word for grandson/nephew should be one of them, since this would
appear to be a semi-basic kinship term, but there is no denying that English
borrowed its version of the word in question from French, so however strange
it may seem, such borowing has been known to happen.   And a change of /ft/
to /fot/ (if /f/ is what "ph" means) would not be that strange:  for vowels
to be inserted into sequences regarded as difficult, taking on the color (in
this case labial) of an adjacent consonant is fairly normal.

 But I return to the names.  If the original name was /trosha/ or /trusha/
(in a language that did not distinguish /u/ and /o/ there is no meaningful
distinction), then we might expect some difference of opinion about 1) what
to do with the /r/ in languages that did not permit /tr/, 2)  whether to
borrow with /o/ or /u/, and 2) how to render /sh/ in languages that did not
have /sh/.   Among the options for the first might be 1) to metathsize
(Tursha, Tursenoi (from Egyptian?)), to delete (Tuscan), or to prefix
(Etruscan, Etruria).  Among the options for the last might be 1) /sk/
(Etruscan, Tuscan), 2 /si/ (Etruria, Troia (with later loss of /s/), and 3)
/s/ (Tursenoi).   All these are variants of the same name.   To split off
"Tursha" and "Troia" from the rest is unwarranted.  They fit in as well as
any of the others, which are universally acknowledged to represent variants
of the same name.

 Nor is it necessarily naive to imagine that the legends in question, like
Icelandic sagas, medieval Saints' Lives, or for that matter the Homeric
epics, might well have a considerable element of truth in them, without
being wholly true.  It would be nice to imagine that such works could either
be regarded as wholly reliable or wholly unreliable, nice but also
simplistic.  The legends are evidence, just of an annoyingly equivocal sort.
 It should be noted as well that much of Herodotus is technically in
indirect discourse.  No particular disbelief is necessarily implied by any
given instance.

Dr. David L. White


From mcv at wxs.nl  Fri Jan 26 15:07:33 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 16:07:33 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
In-Reply-To: <n1496t818isr7qsk1csdb3gqqhfv43bfp8@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.26.JAN.2001.160733.0100.>

On Tue, 16 Jan 2001 20:30:05 +0100, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
<mcv at wxs.nl> wrote:

>I'm personally convinced that the name of the deceased is "S'ivai", as
>the central message of the stele seems to be (repeated twice: in the
>front center, and on the side):  S'ivai evistho S'eronaith sialchveis'
>avis' maras'm av[is' ais'] / S'ivai avis' sialchvis' maras'm avis'
>aomai  [approxiamtely: "Sivai, "evistho" in Seruna, of years 60[?]
>and[?] 5[?] years died[?]"].

One further thought: if we link the words <toverona[rom]> and
<tavarsio> on the stele to Etruscan <tevarath> "referee, judge", a
plausible hypothesis would be that the deceased's function (performed
"for Holaie the Phokaian", whose "naphoth" he was, in a place called
"Serona") would have something to do with the administration of
justice (despite the spear and shield(?) with which he is depicted).
Now <(h)isto:r> (*wid-tor-) is (Homeric) Greek for "judge", but I
wonder if there is an attestation in Ancient Greek of a magistrature
*<eu-(h)isto:r>, as this would fit very well with Lemnian <evistho>
(the -r may have been weak in the Greek source dialect, or dispensed
with in Lemnian if the plural suffix in that language was -r, as it is
in Etruscan).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Sun Jan 28 04:47:56 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 04:47:56 -0000
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <SUN.28.JAN.2001.044756.0000.>

Steve Gustafson (15 Jan 2001) wrote:

>But my understanding is that the business of the reconstruction of the IE
>noun case system reveals a number of both stillborn and fossil cases that,
>had they been generalised, would have added to the number of cases
>recoverable.  Moreover, my recollection is that the existence of languages
>with otherwise conservative morphology, like Greek, Gothic, and Hittite,
>that never seem to have had the full complement of Sanskrit cases, and the
>strongly different system that prevails in the Tocharian languages, has led
>some to suggest that the PIE cases may have been added to, rather than
>subtracted from.

Yes, Tocharian shows that (Early) PIE must have had a rich variety of
morphemes capable of forming case-suffixes and verbal endings.

>The Sanskrit, Celtic, and Latin cases that are formed in the plural on *-bh-
>seem to be elaborations on a common suffix, at least somewhat comparable to
>the Etruscan cases.  Germanic and Slavic apparently used a different suffix,
>*-m-, and Slavic may have worked it the same way.  This suggests to me, that
>the PIE cases may once have had agglutinative features, and that we can still
>see part of the process by which they were built up.

This is certainly reasonable; some of the suffixes look like composites. The
real puzzle is why PIE (or its descendents) should have abandoned
agglutinative morphology in favor of a mixed bag of suffixes, apparently
discarding perfectly good composites. Do any Uralists have examples of
agglutinative languages moving toward "fusional" case-morphology? Or perhaps
PIE was never fully agglutinative, the process of establishing composite
suffixes as case-markers being interrupted before completion?

>Moreover, the *bh- suffix has been fossilized in Greek words like -thyrephi-,
>"outside."  This was once a productive instrumental style case in Greek, as
>revealed in Mycenean ko-ru-pi, "with helmets," and po-ni-ki-pi, "using purple
>dye."

This suffix was still productive in Epic Greek; e.g. <hippoisin kai
ochesphin> 'with horses and chariots' (Hom. Od. IV.533).

>I may be a certifiable kook [and I cheerfully confess, no more than an
>interested amateur], but it seems that the Etruscan noun morphology --- though
>it has obviously been substantially reshaped --- does not rule out that there
>may be a common ancestor between PIE and Etruscan.  I would not speculate that
>Etruscan is a direct descendant of PIE.  Etruscan strikes me as interesting,
>in that it seems a logical place to -test- theories about super-families.

What I mean by "certifiable kooks" are those who derive Etruscan from
Hebrew, Serbian, Ukrainian, Turkish, etc. on the basis of arbitrary and
capricious impressionism. Serious comparative work requires systematic
tables of sound-correspondences. Kooks have no comprehension of seriousness
and their theories turn sound-change into a haphazard chaos which, as we
know from IE studies, does not reflect reality.

Wherever the Etruscans may have been between (say) 2500 BCE and 700, when
their inscriptions started, it is likely that they were never very far from
communities of IE-speakers. Etruscan words that look like IE may have been
borrowed from IE. This is why I say that a "deeper knowledge" of the
Etruscan vocabulary is required. In order to set up sound-tables between PIE
and Proto-Tyrrhenian, we need a set of words which we reasonably believe to
be "native" Etruscan, so that we are not just comparing PIE sounds with
their own reflexes in borrowed form.

I think that not only Etruscan but also pre-IE substrates must be taken into
account when attempting to construct super-families which include IE.
Neglecting these lesser-known languages amounts to (pardon the expression)
not playing with a full deck.

DGK


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 30 20:55:32 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 20:55:32 -0000
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <TUE.30.JAN.2001.205532.0000.>

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (16 Jan 2001) wrote:

[snip of DGK's material on Lemnian alphabet]

>But Lemnos is only 50km or so off the Chalcidian coast.  It is
>definitely not an Ionian, Aeolic or Cycladic island.  In fact, the
>surprising thing would be if the alphabet did *not* belong to the
>Euboico-Chalcidian family.

Lemnos is about the same distance from the Troad, so the Phrygian alphabet
would not be surprising here. In fact, if the Lemno-Tyrrhenians were the
relic of a great migration from Anatolia (which I have been arguing against)
it would be surprising if they had severed all ties with their homeland and
gone in the other direction to get an alphabet.

I now think the Lemno-Tyrrhenians were probably the offshoot of a Tyrrhenian
community living in Acte, the easternmost peninsula of Chalcidice, along
with other non-Hellenes (Thuc. IV.109). Despite de Simone's doubts, I find
it most plausible that they acquired the alphabet in Chalcidice (or perhaps
Euboea), not in Italy. To my knowledge, no Etruscan inscriptions found in
Italy use the peculiar conventions of the Lemnian alphabet (O instead of U,
L with upper stroke, treatment of sibilants).

>Larissa Bonfante says the word [nefts] was borrowed in Etruscan from Latin,
>and in fact it might have been borrowed from any Indo-European
>language having a reflex of *nepot-, including Greek (Homeric
><nepodes>) or even Carian (<nchoth> or <nphoth> "child", if I can
>trust Woudhuizen's sources [Meriggi]).  So this word is rather
>inconclusive, except that it's obviously easier to go from <naphoth>
>to <nefts> than the other way around.

Good point. I can't prove that <naphoth> was picked up in Italy. Given the
proximity of other IE languages from which it might have been borrowed, I
must admit its presence on the stele is inconclusive.

>> The stele also contains <aker tavars'io vanalasial>, evidently the name of
>> the honored/deceased in regular Etruscan form: Aker = praenomen, Tavars'io
>> = gentilicium, Vanalasial = metronymic.

>The two lines are usually read: "vanalasial s'eronai morinail / aker
>tavars'io" (I'm sure there's a reason for reading "vanalasial", but on
>every copy I've seen, what I read is: "va.m.ala.sial:
>s'eronaimorinail").  There is no compelling reason not to accept your
>alternative reading "Aker Tavars'io / Vanalasial S'eronai Morinail",
>but if the first 3 words are the name of the deceased, what is the
>meaning of <s'eronaimorinail>, apparently the genitive of "in Seruna,
>in Murina"?

My reading of these two lines follows Ribezzo and Buffa. The reverse order
is the "lectio difficilior". Looking at the crude copy in my possession, I
see that <tavars'io> is compressed with respect to <aker> in order to fit
between the latter and the horizontal <s'ivai>. It is clear that
<maras'...s'ivai> was written before the vertical inscriptions, and that the
writer considered top-to-bottom (from his viewpoint) the normal order for
lines of text. (The vertical inscriptions, both <aker> etc. and <holaie>
etc., show that the writer regarded right-to-left as the default direction,
so <s'ivai> cannot start the horizontal inscription and must end it.) Had
<vanalasial> been written first, it is unlikely that the writer would have
stopped with <morinail> and taken the chance on running out of room with
<aker tavars'io> in a closed space.

On my crude copy, the third letter of <vanalasial> exhibits a slight
extension which might, but probably shouldn't, be interpreted as an
additional stroke making it into M. Most authors who have seen the stele
concur on reading N (for me, of course, "autopsia" is out of the question).
As for the apparent interpuncts within words Pauli, in the first edition of
the inscription (1886), did not regard them as functional. Lejeune (1957)
thought they represented the syllabic punctuation characteristic of South
Etrurian and Campanian inscriptions in the VI cent. BCE and argued for an
interdependence between Etrurian and Lemnian writing systems. However, the
points visible on my copy, particularly within <vanalasial>, do not agree
well with true syllabic punctuation, in which the points usually follow the
first letter of a word (especially a vowel), divide two consonants within a
word, or follow the whole word. They are best attributed here to the
porosity of the stone.

I don't *know* the meaning of <s'eronaimorinail>, but if <aker> etc. is read
as a man's name in PN-GN-MN format, what follows probably indicates his
locality. We agree that <s'eronaith> is probably a locative and <morinail>
probably refers to the Lemnian town of Murina. <S'eronai> is plausibly a
proximate use of the comitative (cf. Rec. Etr. murce Capue 'served near
Capua'). <Morinail> might stand for the genitive *morinaial. The meaning
could be something like 'near S'eruna of Murina' = 'born near S'eruna which
is in the district, or under the jurisdiction, of Murina'.

>I'm personally convinced that the name of the deceased is "S'ivai", as
>the central message of the stele seems to be (repeated twice: in the
>front center, and on the side):  S'ivai evistho S'eronaith sialchveis'
>avis' maras'm av[is' ais'] / S'ivai avis' sialchvis' maras'm avis'
>aomai  [approxiamtely: "Sivai, "evistho" in Seruna, of years 60[?]
>and[?] 5[?] years died[?]"].

I'm inclined to regard <s'ivai> as cognate to Etr. <zivas>, as several
authors have suggested. <Zivas> has been controversial for over a century.
Bugge, who considered Etruscan to be IE (closest to Armenian), rendered it
'lebend' on the basis of resemblance to <vivus>, <quick>, etc. Cortsen
scoffed at this and countered with 'tot'. Pallottino regarded <zivas> as
gen. pl. 'dei morti'. IMHO <zivas> is most likely the gen. sg. of an
abstract noun *ziva meaning 'sepulture, burial, funeral' or the like, or the
honor of the funerary ritual. If so, Lemn. <s'ivai> is probably an
instrumental (or similar) use of the comitative meaning something like 'with
interment', 'with a funeral', perhaps 'with honor'.

>On the other hand, Lemnian shows little or no trace of the ubiquitous
>Etruscan 3rd.p. preterit ending -ce (there is <phoke>, but in view of
><Holaies'i Phokiasiale>, one can doubt whether this is a verb or a
>reference to Phocaea), and it is in fact impossible to recognize any
>verbal form in Lemnian (maybe -io ?).

Ubiquitous? Where do you find the suffix -ce on the Cippus Perusinus? (Okay,
unfair question, the CP isn't a funerary monument.) I doubt that <phoke>
refers to Phocaea, as *Phokia would have constituted a single morpheme for
the Lemnians. Had they borrowed the Greek word for 'seal', it is unlikely
they would have used it in a solemn funerary inscription. I think <phoke> is
most likely a preterit, though I can't prove it.

> The gap between <naphoth> and
><nefts> has already been commented on.  Neither <z> nor <f> occur in
>this short fragment (and how would Lemnian have rendered <f>?), and
>Etr. <u> (no <o>) is Lemnian <o> (no <u>) [this might merely be an
>orthographic issue, in view of Morina=Murina].

The letter <z> is found elsewhere on Lemnos, at Kabirion in the fragmentary
inscription <zari...>. If <s'ivai> is indeed cognate with Etr. <zivas>, it
indicates that the convention at Kaminia was to hypodifferentiate the
sibilants, using the zigzag which we choose to write <s'> for both phonemes
written <s'> and <z> in standard North Etr. orthography. Not having the sign
8 (transcribed <f>), the Lemnians might have used the digraphs FH or HF
(transcribed <vh>, <hv>) as in Etruscan of the VII cent. BCE, or they might
have used phi (again hypodifferentiating, as later Greeks did with Latin
<f>). The phoneme <f>, however written, is not common in Archaic Etruscan
and its absence from known Lemnian texts is not surprising. If /o/ and /u/
are not phonemically distinct, their representation is initially a matter of
taste, subsequently one of custom. These are all orthographic issues. What
they indicate is that the Lemno-Tyrrhenians acquired the alphabet
independently of their relatives in Etruria. No sweeping conclusions about
phonologic divergence should be attempted.

> Lemnian <mara> in the
>formula <sialchvis' avis' maras'm avis'> must surely be a numeral, but
>fits none of the Etruscan ones (the only one that comes even remotely
>close is <mach> "5", a little bit closer [but still remote] if we
>consider the derivative <muvalch> "50", showing that the -ch was not
>part of the root, but probably identical to -c(h) "and" [cf. PIE
>*pen-kwe "... and 5"], so something like *mawa-k(h) "[... and ]5",
>*mawa-alkh "50").

Surely a numeral? Surely non-numeric terms can stand next to words for
'year'! I'm personally skeptical about <muvalch> being derived from <mach>.
Rix has suggested *machvalch <- *machv (the <v> is superscript indicating
labialization), but the process *uv <- *achv is otherwise unrecognized in
Etruscan, hence completely "ad hoc". <Mach> and <muvalch> are probably from
distinct roots; likewise <zal> 'two' and <zathrum> 'twenty'.

> In sum, I see little reason to think that Lemnian
>differs only trivially from Etruscan, despite the fact that it is
>clearly related to it.

Whoa! I didn't intend by the term "dialect" to imply that the differences
between Lemnian and mainland Archaic Etruscan should be dismissed as
"trivial". The Lemnian stele fills in some of our knowledge of Archaic
Etruscan, for example by providing the Archaic form of the decile suffix,
which is unattested in Italy. From the comparative standpoint Lemnian is an
*effective* dialect of Archaic Etruscan, whatever its *functional* status
might have been in terms of mutual intelligibility with the Etrurians.

My argument that the Lemno-Tyrrhenians came from Italy stands or falls with
the interpretation of <aker tavars'io vanalasial>. If this is indeed a name
in PN-GN-MN format, its only reasonable origin is west-central Italy. If
these words mean something else, I would argue that the probable source of
these Tyrrhenians was the upper Adriatic region. By far the most plausible
hypothesis IMHO has the Etruscans entering Italy by the NE land-route. I
repeat my contention that sea-migration from Anatolia has no solid evidence
behind it.

DGK


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu Jan 25 20:00:59 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 15:00:59 EST
Subject: Greek Gods
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.150059.EST.>

In a message dated 1/25/01 1:54:41 AM Mountain Standard Time,
dlwhite at texas.net writes:

> more

>         Sorry.  The statement I was thinking of referred only to the major
> (12?) gods of the pantheon.
>

-- the JIES gave a PIE derivation for Hera some time ago, and for Hercules.
Something to do with *iera, if my memory serves me correctly.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Jan 25 20:23:47 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 15:23:47 -0500
Subject: Pre-PIE as a PIE substrate?
In-Reply-To: <200101251156.FAA04029@sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.152347.0500.>

I've come across references to

<seal> (the animal) < OE seolh < Germanic *selhaz < ? Finnic
	(and I think maybe also <selkie>, the Scottish sea critter)
and
<oar> < *airo < ? Finnic

Maybe Ante can give us a Uralic opinion on these

>Please where can I find a complete list of these words which are found in
>both Germanic and western Uralic?
[snip]

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


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Fri Jan 26 08:08:52 2001
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 10:08:52 +0200
Subject: Pre-PIE as a PIE substrate?
In-Reply-To: <200101251216.OAA5082949@paju.oulu.fi>
Message-ID: <FRI.26.JAN.2001.100852.0200.>

[I wrote]
>>However, there are lexical correspondences between western Uralic and
>>Germanic which have no further etymologies in either language family[.]

[Anthony Appleyard]
>Please where can I find a complete list of these words which are found in
>both Germanic and western Uralic?

Regrettably, nowhere. If you're interested in this, you must compile it
yourself. You could e.g. start with going through the material in "Lexikon
der älteren germanischen Lehnwörter in den ostseefinnischen Sprachen" by
A.D. Kylstra et al, 1991-. But this dictionary does not present the
etymologies of the Germanic loan originals, so you would need to check
them in other sources. Moreover, only the first two volumes have been
published so far, so only Finnish words from A to O are included. The rest
could be checked in e.g. the new etymological dictionary "Suomen sanojen
alkuperä" ('The origin of Finnish words'); however, the dictionary is in
Finnish, so you have to know some Finnish in order to effectively use it.
However, SSA does not include all the Germanic loan words, as its attitude
towards loan etymologies seems to be a bit overcritical in general.

However, an excellent book on the research of Germanic loan words in
Finnic is Jorma Koivulehto's book "Verba Mutuata" (Mémoires de la Société
Finno-Ougrienne #237) The book is in German and it contains 16 articles
(some 450 pages in total) by him, dealing with IE-U contacts and focusing
mostly on Finnic and Germanic. I can recommend this as the best
introduction on the topic.

>Someone said in gothic-l at egroups.com that archaeologies ancestral to the
>modern South Saami (= Lappish) culture have been found in all of Scandinavia
>dand as far south as Hamburg in Germany. If so, then perhaps in South Saamic
>we have a living descendant of one of the many aboriginal substratum
>languages that incoming Indo-European overrode so long ago, and the above
>words and their like are pre-IE substratum words. If Finno-Ugrian languages
>were once spoken in all Scandinavia and Denmark and a long way into
>Schleswig-Holstein, then their speakers in those southern areas would have
>changed from tundra hunters to a denser population and more settled mode of
>life as the climate got warmer as the Ice Age ended and then farming and
>livestock herding came in.

Actually, the most coherent theory explains the Sami as Iron Age newcomers
in the north and Scandinavia that spread from Southern / Mid-Finland and
Carelia. This theory is supported by both archeological and linguistic
evidence. And even though some scholars (notably Pekka Sammallahti)
maintain that a Uralic language ancestral to Samic was spoken in
Mid-Scandinavia, Northern Finland, and the Kola Peninsula already in the
stone age, there is no evidence pointing to an earlier "Samic"
inhabitation in Southern Scandinavia, let alone Denmark. But instead,
there is overwhelming evidence (e.g. substrate toponyms borrowed into
Finnic from Samic) for the view that the Samic "original home" stretched
in the Bronze Age from inland Southern Finland to the east, at least to
Lake Ladoga and Onega (the exact northern eastern borders have not been
determined, as no one has done any systematic research on this; however,
there seem to be several very Samic-looking toponyms even east of Onega).

Moreover, the ideas you refer to above seem to be linguistically
anachronistic in the sense that it does not make sense to speak of "Samic"
(let alone "South Sami", which is one of the ten Sami languages which
quite recently diverged from Proto-Samic) on these time levels (the end of
the Ice Age). Actually, even Proto-Uralic must be dated later, and it is
quite certain that by the end of the Ice Age there were no Uralians
anywhere in the vicinity of the Baltic Sea. Some researchers (e.g.
Dolukhanov, Wiik, Nuñez) have proposed quite different scenarios, but
these have been rejected by the majority of Uralists, as criticism has
pointed out fatal flaws in the thoery.

>That increases the chance that Germanic started
>as Indo-European spoken with a "south coast of the Baltic" type Finno-Ugrian
>accent.

E.g. Kalevi Wiik has proposed several Uralic substrate features in
Germanic, but his theory is very unconvincing; for criticism see e.g.
Petri Kallio: "Uralic Substrate Features in Germanic?", Journal de la
Socété Finno-Ougrienne 87.

>That might also explain peculiar Germanic features such as weak-type
>adjectives declining different from 1st and 2nd declension nouns.

Could you elaborate, as my knowledge of Proto-Germanic is quite
superficial?

>Perhaps also, Balto-Slavonic (Lithuanian etc) started as IE spoken with a
>"south-east coast of the Baltic" Finno-Ugrian accent; Estonian and Livonian
>would be the nearest living relatives of that area's pre-IE substratum.

The case for a Uralic substrate in Proto-Slavic is much stronger, but the
evidence cannot be (at least as yet) concidered compelling.

Regards,
Ante Aikio


From hwhatting at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 30 08:40:09 2001
From: hwhatting at hotmail.com (Hans-Werner Hatting)
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 09:40:09 +0100
Subject: words specific to Saamic / Finnish and Germanic
Message-ID: <TUE.30.JAN.2001.094009.0100.>

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001 08:37:37 GMT Anthony Appleyard wrote:
>English "ship", Germanic "skip-", seems to have a relative in Greek:
>{skaphos}. Also, Greek {skapto:} = "I dig"; the connection is likely via
>dugout canoes (made by hollowing out a big single log).

The Gmc. cognates of these Greek words come most likely from the family of
Engl. _shave_, German _schaben_ (Gk. /ph/ < PIE /bh/,/gwh/). If Gmc. _skip_
had a cognate in Greek, it ought to be along the lines of
*sk(e/o)ib- . As _skip_ is one of the candidates for a loan from a substrate
in Gmc., which is made more likely by the fact that PIE /b/ was very rare,
so any Gmc. word with /p/ is suspect of being a loan from another (IE or
non-IE language). For an IE substrate, we could accept a connection to
_skapto:_.

As I see this problem, it would be good if we were able to reconstruct one
substrate or at least a sufficiently small number of substrate layers, with
clear rules for their phonological relationship with PIE (or some other
European language family). Otherwise we risk inventing a substrate for every
word in Gmc. which cannot be accounted by with the normal sound changes from
PIE, but which has a PIE feel about it. In a variation of an old rule -
substrata non sunt multiplicanda.

Best regards,
H. W. Hatting


From hwhatting at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 30 07:29:55 2001
From: hwhatting at hotmail.com (Hans-Werner Hatting)
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 08:29:55 +0100
Subject: Goths
Message-ID: <TUE.30.JAN.2001.082955.0100.>

On Mon, 15 Jan 2001 21:19:21 -0600, David White wrote:

>Harking back to an earlier emissive, I would like to know more about
>how the name of the Goths is supposed to have been from two different >
>agentnouns, each from a different ablaut grade.
>        It would also be good to know how the /o/ got there in Latin.  >
>One possibility is that the name (as it reached Latin) is indeed an
>"other-name" from other Germanic, in which case /o/ rather than /u/ in a
>past-participle of /geutan/ (more or less) would in fact be regular.  Or,
>to put it perhaps more clearly, the from with /o/ would be the non-Gothic
>Germanic, whereas the form with /u/ would be the Gothic version.  That the
>Greeks were in contact with the Goths whereas the Romans were in contact
>with other Germanic tribes might explain this difference, which as far as I
>can see has no other explanation.

Just a suggestion:
We could have an o-Stem *gauta- (with o-grade of the root, a type widely
attested for PIE and Gmc.),denoting the tribe, and an idividualising derived
n-stem *guton-, denoting the members of the tribe.

I would not worry much about Latin /o/ for Gmc. /u/, as at that time short
/u/ and /o/ probably already had merged in Vulgar Latin.

Best regards,
H. W. Hatting


From evenstar at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Jan 26 00:59:24 2001
From: evenstar at mail.utexas.edu (Shilpi Misty Bhadra)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 18:59:24 -0600
Subject: Calcutta/Kolkatta
In-Reply-To: <E14IsMZ-0007CP-00@nautilus.shore.net>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.185924.0600.>

[ moderator snip ]

Dear Rohan,

That was an excellent commentary on Kolkata. I have seen it written both
Kolkatta and Kolkata (already), so that made it confusing. The fundamental
problem is transcription of the language to Roman letters/sounds. Of course
there are political issues. In Budapest, after the Hungarians got rid of
communism and Soviet influence, they renamed every street that had a
Russian name to a Hungarian one. I have been told by many a Hungarian that
the older generation spoke and knew Russian, but most refuse to speak
Russian now. They will speak in Hungarian or German. The Shik pronunciation
is news to me. But then again, I don't know that many Bengalis and more of
them say it than I know. No one (Brits, Bengalis, etc.)can pronounce every
phoneme or sound in the world perfectly, and I fully understand that. That
is why studying loanwords and how different cultures transliterate words is
interesting. I hope I didn't offend anyone. I myself cannot do the -dn-
cluster in Dnieper among many other sounds. I think that regardless of the
name change, most people will pronounce or mispronounce the names. I think
if people have been using a name for many years, most people will continue
using that name out of habit, and the real generation that it will affect
are those learning the language or word for the first time or early in
their life (i.e. children). I apologize for my lack of knowledge. You
handled the question much better. And you are right, it was better for the
Indo-Iranian or Indology list.

Shilpi Misty Bhadra
University of Texas at Austin
Ancient History, Classics, and Humanities (focus: Indo-European Studies)
senior undergraduate
evenstar at mail.utexas.edu
512-320-0229 (ph)
512-476-3367 (fax)


From maxdashu at LanMinds.Com  Thu Jan 25 21:21:37 2001
From: maxdashu at LanMinds.Com (Max Dashu)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 13:21:37 -0800
Subject: la leche
In-Reply-To: <3A6380CE.39C23231@memphis.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.132137.0800.>

>>> Why shouldn't a product of the female breast become feminine?

>> If anything, it's the masculine forms that need explaining.

What, then, are we to make of a feminine form for "penis" in Greek (i psoli)?

Max Dashu


From r.piva at swissonline.ch  Thu Jan 25 22:45:32 2001
From: r.piva at swissonline.ch (Renato Piva)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 23:45:32 +0100
Subject: la leche (was: Re: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro..)..
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.234532.0100.>

>> Leo Connolly wrote:

> But my Latin dictionary (an old Cassell's from the 1930s) lists only _lac_,
> not _lacte_.  Still, it is conceivable that _lacte_ arose in Vulgar Latin,
> and it would be a perfectly good ancestor of _leche_ et al.

In Petron's Satyricon (1st AD), Trimalchio, the rich libertus from Asia Minor
who, being a foreigner, speaks a vulgar variety of Latin (with many 'errors' as
compared to classical Latin), says 'bonum lactem' (I can't tell where exactly,
as I have no text at hand, but I'm sure it's there).

R. Piva


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Fri Jan 26 14:24:54 2001
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (Gabor Sandi)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 14:24:54 -0000
Subject: la leche (was: Re: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro..)..
Message-ID: <FRI.26.JAN.2001.142454.0000.>

>From: "Leo A. Connolly" <connolly at memphis.edu>
>Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 22:59:27 +0000

[ moderator snip ]

>I'm no specialist either (Germanic philology is my thing, at least
>officially).  But my Latin dictionary (an old Cassell's from the 1930s) lists
>only _lac_, not _lacte_.  Still, it is conceivable that _lacte_ arose in
>Vulgar Latin, and it would be a perfectly good ancestor of _leche_ et al.

Although I am no specialist either, I do have a life-long interest in
Romance linguistics, so let me share my thoughts on this topic:

1. I think that the main reason for Latin neuter nouns turning into
masculines in the Romance languages is that in the singular, neuter
adjectives of the -o declension (by far the most common) were identical to
their masculine counterparts in all cases except the nominative even in
Classical Latin:

Nom.  bonus  bonum
Acc.     bonum
Gen.     boni
Dat.     bono
Abl.     bono

Once phonetic attrition (loss of final d) achieved the same for the definite
article-to-be ille (ille/*illu *illu illi illo illo), the general impression
must have been that masculine and neuter nouns mostly take the same
qualifiers and are replaced by the same pronouns, therefore they must belong
to the same category. The loss of final -s in the precursors of Italian and
Romanian must have reinforced this trend in eastern dialects, since then the
nominative also became identical: *bonu.

2. The word "lac" must have been felt to be an isolate in the language.
Correct me if I am wrong, but no other noun with final -c survived into
Vulgar Latin. It would have been natural for the nominative/accusative
singular to be re-formed based on the genitive lactis, especially because of
analogy with the similar-sounding nox/noctis, replaced in Vulgar Latin by
*noctis/noctis.

3. To continue this trend of thought, the fact that lac became feminine
leche in Spanish is not so much a matter of a neuter noun becoming feminine.
Instead, we should see it as one of several examples of masculine nouns of
the Latin third declension becoming feminine (and vice versa?). Leche, sal,
sangre, flor are feminine in Spanish; fleur, dent and mer are feminine in
French; ponte is feminine in Portuguese. With dictionaries and some time on
my hands I am sure I could provide more examples. What I cannot provide is a
reason: analogy, semantic associations, sub- or superstratum influence? Any
thoughts by real experts?

4. On corpus and tempus, we should remember that the final -s in these two
words was very resilient in those dialects of Vulgar Latin that kept
word-final -s. Old Spanish still had cuerpos and tiempos in the singular for
these words (masculine of course), although the language eventually left off
the final s through analogy with all other nouns. And Old French had an -s
in these words in both the cas sujet and cas rigime in the singular, still
kept today in the orthography (corps, temps), and even in speech if we
consider the nouns in expressions like "de temps en temps" as in the
singular.

Best wishes to all,
Gabor


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu Jan 25 17:50:10 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 18:50:10 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
In-Reply-To: <F265FcShw8pCjAZK0Yb00004c39@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.185010.0100.>

On Sun, 21 Jan 2001 03:54:24 -0000, "Douglas G Kilday"
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

>Some brief comments: First, *lactem is not required to explain the /t/ in
>the Romance forms.

But it is to explain the -e.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 25 18:29:23 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 19:29:23 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.192923.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kreso Megyeral" <miskec4096 at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2001 10:25 PM

>> I'm no specialist and I don't know what was the vulgar latin or the early
>> romance word for milk on the Peninsula at that time, but my latin dictionary
>> gives "lacte, is" for milk (and "lac" as an archaic form). I think that
>> "lactem" then, would have been the accusative form (I have to rely on my
>> memory, though, since I don't have any Latin grammar with me :) ).

> It can't, since all the nouns ending on -e are still neuter in Latin.

[Ed]

I'd like to add that my (Dutch) Latin dictionary says 'lacte' is archaic, and
'lac' is the regular nominative in Classic Latin. Anyway, it is a neuter, so
'lactem' is impossible as you said, since all neuters have identical
nominatives and accusatives. But, of course, an accusative 'lacte' is possible.

It also says that it is derived from a root (g)lact-.

Ed. Selleslagh


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu Jan 25 17:45:35 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 18:45:35 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
In-Reply-To: <003901c07fb7$1bbeb680$4e05703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.184535.0100.>

On Tue, 16 Jan 2001 13:23:06 +0100, "Eduard Selleslagh" <edsel at glo.be>
wrote:

><Carrasco> has all the characteristics of a somewhat complicated origin: it is
>almost certainly a compound, with the suffix -(V)sco, which can be IE but just
>as well Iberian or Basque, even though that wouldn't affect its meaning. I
>would guess that the Latin form is derived from a substrate word with /a/. The
>Spanish word cannot possibly be derived directly from the late-Latin form,
>because the Latin c would have become /T/ (English th), not /k/ [In Sp. cerro
>means 'small mountain, hill']. On the other hand, no such objection exists for
>It. cerro.  Could <carrasco> and Lat. cerrus /kerrus/ be related to a pre-IE
>root and/or Celtic, for a certain type of mountain landscape? In such case,
>the suffix -sko would make a lot of sense. Just a thought.

Carrasca's grow on stony ground (the Dutch name is "steeneik"), so a
connection with *KARR- "stone" is not unlikely.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From centrostudilaruna at libero.it  Fri Jan 26 19:26:06 2001
From: centrostudilaruna at libero.it (Alberto Lombardo)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 20:26:06 +0100
Subject: R: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <FRI.26.JAN.2001.202606.0100.>

ES wrote:

"<Carrasco> has all the characteristics of a somewhat complicated origin: it is
almost certainly a compound, with the suffix -(V)sco, which can be IE but just
as well Iberian or Basque, even though that wouldn't affect its meaning. I
would guess that the Latin form is derived from a substrate word with /a/.  The
Spanish word cannot possibly be derived directly from the late-Latin form,
because the Latin c would have become /T/ (English th), not /k/ [In Sp.  cerro
means 'small mountain, hill']. On the other hand, no such objection exists for
It. cerro.  Could <carrasco> and Lat. cerrus /kerrus/ be related to a pre-IE
root and/or Celtic, for a certain type of mountain landscape? In such case, the
suffix -sko would make a lot of sense. Just a thought."

I'd like just add that the suffix -asko is the more tipycal locative ligurian
suffix; it seems to have had IE links. The meaning must have been "high,
elevated place".

Alberto Lombardo
Italy


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu Jan 25 17:48:24 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 18:48:24 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
In-Reply-To: <LAW2-F53sXZZTHfyQge00001202@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.184824.0100.>

On Thu, 18 Jan 2001 00:10:10 +0100, "Kreso Megyeral"
<miskec4096 at hotmail.com> wrote:

>In one Spanish grammar written in Croatian I found that there are still some
>words in Spanish considered neuter (of course, not "leche") that express
>collectives or some young animals. The article quoted is LO. Is it indeed,
>or is it some interpretation of the author?

LO as an article (i.e. preceding a noun) is completely unknown to me.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 25 18:59:12 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 19:59:12 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.195912.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kreso Megyeral" <miskec4096 at hotmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 12:10 AM

> In one Spanish grammar written in Croatian I found that there are still some
> words in Spanish considered neuter (of course, not "leche") that express
> collectives or some young animals. The article quoted is LO. Is it indeed,
> or is it some interpretation of the author?

[Ed]

LO is a definite article for the neuter sg., derived from Lat. demonstrative
(acc.) ILLUD (like LA < ILLAM, and EL < ILLUM). It is usually used in phrases
like 'hacer lo necesario' ('faire le nécessaire', 'do what's needed/the
necessary things') where it designates collectives, or in more abstract ones :
a characteristic like 'lo bello, lo bonito es que...' ('the beautiful/nice
thing [about it] is that...').

In some regions - the one I know for certain is Murcia - it appears in place
names like 'Lo Pagán', apparently referring originally to a property of some
family; in the same region you find also toponyms like Los Urrutias (Basque
settlers in the Campo de Cartagena when it was still largely a 'secano') or Los
Velones, where such reference cannot be doubted. I would guess that LO has then
a collective meaning 'all that belongs to...'

LO can also be used separately as a general indication of 'the things': 'lo que
hay que hacer...' ('that what has to be done...'), similar to Fr. 'ce [que]'.

I am not aware of any neuter nouns in Spanish.

If my memory serves me right, there are some southern Italian family names like
Lo Vecchio, that might be based upon similar toponyms, but I leave that to the
specialists in S. Italian dialects. Of course, LO is an article in regular
Italian, but only as a replacement before sp-, sc- etc,. for euphonic reasons
('lo sport').

Ed. Selleslagh


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Jan 25 20:11:34 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 15:11:34 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
In-Reply-To: <LAW2-F53sXZZTHfyQge00001202@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.151134.0500.>

[ moderator edited ]

>Rick Mc Callister wrote:

>>How common is this phenomenon in other Romance
>>languages and other other languages with grammatical gender?

>Interesting thing with disappearing of Latin neuter nouns happens in
>Romanian. Romanian actually has neuter gender, but in singular forms it's
>equal to masculine, while in plural to feminine. Even the definite article,
>which is postpositive in Romanian, doesn't have its own form, but follows
>the same pattern.

>In one Spanish grammar written in Croatian I found that there are still some
>words in Spanish considered neuter (of course, not "leche") that express
>collectives or some young animals. The article quoted is LO. Is it indeed,
>or is it some interpretation of the author?

	Spanish neuter lo is used with adjectives to express abstract
qualities; e.g.
bueno "good (masc.)"
el bueno "the good (person, thing, place) (masc.)"
lo bueno "that which is good, the good (thing, part, aspect, etc.)"

there are also the neuter demonstratives esto "this one", eso "that one",
aquello "that one (far away in space or time; or last in a series)". These
are used to refer to abstract thoughts or things without antecedents such
as a "one-eyed, one-horned flying purple people-eater"

regarding collectives or baby animals, you just use the normal masculine or
feminine article; e.g. el ternero "the calf", el cachorro "the puppy, cub,
whelp", el gatito "the kitten"; el pinal, el pinar "the pine grove", los
pinos "the pines"

Asturian, on the other hand, does have a neuter that's used for collectives
and, I think, "topic" or "generic" use. Posner talks about it and I have an
Asturian student who's heard it used.

Regarding masculine singular, feminine plural. Off the top of the head, the
example in Spanish is el arte, las artes. Some speakers (and most
dictionaries), however, use el arte (masc.) to mean "art" in a generic
sense and el arte (fem.) to mean "art" in a specific sense. I've only come
across the plural as las artes (fem.).
The form el, normally masculine, is, of course, also used with feminine
nouns beginning with a stressed /a/

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


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Jan 25 17:58:28 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 12:58:28 -0500
Subject: cat < ?
In-Reply-To: <e3.f126599.2795a489@aol.com>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.125828.0500.>

[snip]

>The tail idea also occurs in <skiouros> squirrel, interpreted as
>'shadow-tail.'   But the shadow part <skio-) doesn't seem to make a lot of
>sense.  (Perhaps, <skiros>, sometimes land overgrown with bushes, scrub.)

	If they look like American squirrels, their long thick tails shade
them like umbrellas --but I admit that I'm getting into folk etymology.
	"Scrub tail, brush tail, bushy tail" describe squirrels even better
--that is, if skiros + ouros actually means that in Greek

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


From jharvey at ucla.edu  Sat Jan 27 01:32:14 2001
From: jharvey at ucla.edu (Jasmin Harvey)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 17:32:14 -0800
Subject: cat < ?
In-Reply-To: <e3.f126599.2795a489@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.26.JAN.2001.173214.0800.>

[ Moderator's note:
  I am setting aside the general prohibition against CC'd messages in this one
  instance, since there may be some interest on the part of the non-members
  who have contributed.  Please be circumspect in replies, since they will not
  be used to the volume this list can generate.
  --rma ]

I forwarded parts of this discussion to a friend who forwarded it onward and
this response came back which may be of interest.

Jasmin Harvey
Germanic Linguistics C.Phil.
http://www.germanic.ucla.edu
jharvey at ucla.edu

-------------------------------------
The source for the Celtic Cat information ... was Alexei Kondratiev, via
Brenda Daverin.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Fwd: Re: Of human cattage
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 23:18:18 -0800
From: "B. Daverin" <bdaverin at best.com>
To: "Birrell Walsh" <birrell at well.com>

Here is my source's response to the origins of the word "cat" taken back
to Indo-European through Old/Common Celtic. I know that it's possible
that someone else on that list has already pointed this out, but in case
not, here's more for the discussion.

Sla/n,
Brenda

---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ----------------

The Celtic word for "cat" is perfectly reconstructible as _kattos_ (also
feminine _katta_). This gives _cat_ in both Irish and Scots Gaelic, _kayt_ in
Manx, _cath_ in Welsh, _kath_ in Cornish, and _kazh_ in Breton.  Many
etymological dictionaries say that it's a borrowing from Latin _cattus_, but it
seems completely obvious to me that the reverse is true, that _cattus_ in Latin
(which appears rather late) is in fact a borrowing from a Celtic or other
northern European source, displacing the original _felis_. That the word is
native there is confirmed by the Gaulish name _Cattos_ and the tribal name
_Chatti_ or _Chattes_ ("the Cats" -- ie, "the Wildcats") from the
Celtic-Germanic border country.
   The word is thought to come from an IE stem *_kat-_ or *_qat-_ meaning "to
cast down", in a specialised meaning of "what is cast down = offspring of an
animal". An independent derivation in Latin is _catulus_ "puppy". The Celtic
word evidently began with the sense of "baby animal", then specialised as
"kitten", and eventually came to mean the animal at any age.


From miskec4096 at hotmail.com  Sun Jan 28 15:45:05 2001
From: miskec4096 at hotmail.com (Kreso Megyeral)
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 16:45:05 +0100
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <SUN.28.JAN.2001.164505.0100.>

Kastytis Beitas wrote:

>I can propose other possible origin for some 'non-cat' cat words.
>I think it is a rather frequent case when predatory animal is named
>according its prey.
>For example, in Lithuanian:
>peleda "owl"                   <--  pele "mous" + eda "to eat",
>zhuvedra "tern on gull"  <--  zhuvis 'fish' + eda "to eat" (or edrus
>"voracious")
>In English:
>polecat or polcat at 1320 "ferret" <-- Old French poule, pol "fowl, hen" +
>cat

Typical example are taboo-words, for example Slavic medvld - "honey eater",
meaning that direct mentioning of the animal would bring bad luck.

>2. Hindi bhili 'cat' <-> Russian bilo 'thing for beating', Eng. beat etc.
>(maybe this bhili is cognate to Lithuanian pele)

Russian "bilo" is a noun derived from the verb "bit'" - to beat, meaning
that it CAN be related to Hindi, but it could be clear only if someone knew
the Sanskrit word.

>This comparison of mouse anf fly supports my hypothesis, because other
>possible meaning for 'fly-words' is a "bitter; one who bites". This fits to
>"bee-words" too: in Lithuanian bite "bee" etc. Armenian muk 'mouse' is
>similar to Russian muka "flour; what is grinded' and Russian muka
>"suffering"...

Similar, yes, but if you don't pay attention on vocal laws, showing that
Russian "u" comes from older "9" (nasalysed o), thus "m9ka".


From miskec4096 at hotmail.com  Sun Jan 28 15:55:26 2001
From: miskec4096 at hotmail.com (Kreso Megyeral)
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 16:55:26 +0100
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <SUN.28.JAN.2001.165526.0100.>

David White wrote:

>A truly minor point ... Mongooses (-geese?) are viverrids, not mustelids, and
>only one type of viverrid, the genet (not mongoose) of Iberia (spreading
>recently to France and even western Germany), occurs in Europe.

>  For the Romans to call a mongoose a cat would have been more or less as for
>us to call skunks 'polecats' or a kind of racoon 'ringtail cats'.

>Not that that stops us. Speaking of deplorable, or understandable, vagueness
>in terms for animal, it is within the realm of possibility the word for 'fox'
>and 'wolf' were not originally distinguished, which would explain a few
>things.

Another good example occurs in Hungarian, where the word for turtle actually
means "frog in shield", showing that even two different classes of
vertebrates can merge. But mongooses are more similar to martens then to
cats, and the marten is also quite usual species in Europe.


From vistasjy at md.prestige.net  Tue Jan 30 03:55:49 2001
From: vistasjy at md.prestige.net (JohnYY)
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 22:55:49 -0500
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <MON.29.JAN.2001.225549.0500.>

The classical solution to the "mongoose plural" problem is embodied in the
old (and probably apocryphal) message sent to the e-tailer by the poor chap
beset by a plethora of cobras: "Please send me a mongoose; by the way, send
me another one.". Since it stems from Marathi 'mong{s', perhaps a more
elegant solutiion would be to use the plural form from that language (Does
anyone know it?) (cf. "cherubim")

----------
> From: David L. White <dlwhite at texas.net>
> Date: Monday, January 15, 2001 10:28 PM

>     Mongooses (-geese?)

[ moderator snip ]


From hwhatting at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 30 07:19:25 2001
From: hwhatting at hotmail.com (Hans-Werner Hatting)
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 08:19:25 +0100
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <TUE.30.JAN.2001.081925.0100.>

Dear List members,

I think Kaystytis Beitas has made a valid point in suggesting a further
source for the name of the cat.
But there are problems with some of the links he proposes:

1. KB wrote:
>For example: 1. Latin  feles 'cat' reminds of Lithuanian pele 'mouse'. In
>Watkins Dictionary of Indo-European Roots pel- means "to thrust, to
>strike".

>>I suppose Hindi bhili "cat" would be too fortuitous to suggest a
>>connection based on *bhil-, *bhel-?

>2. Hindi bhili 'cat' <-> Russian bilo 'thing for beating', Eng. beat > etc.
>(maybe this bhili is cognate to Lithuanian pele)

I don't know the origin of Hindi *bhili. Based on what KB suggests, a link
to the root behind Engl. bite, Gm. beissen etc. might be possible.
Certainly it is not linked to Lith. pele, as Indian /bh/ corresponds to
Baltic /b/ (if we don't pull out the magic wand of taboo changes, of
course). The vocalism (Hindi /i/ - Latin /e/ should not correspond)makes it
also problematic to link bhili to feles. If we want to find a cognate for
"pele", we would have to look for something like *pel/pol- in Latin and like
*pal/par/p.r- in Indo-Aryan.

2. KB:
>English mouse and German Maus are similar to Russian musor "debris;
>litter". Chernykh states that musor is cognate with Russian musolit'
>"slabber, slaver" and both them are originated from IE *meu-, *mou- >"damp,
>moist" and "liquid dirt; mud". But this cognateness is between >musor and
>mud, moist is more distant in my opinion: musor is >originated as "litter,
>produced by chapping (or by mice?)"...

As KB himself notes, the Gmc. mouse words are related to Slavic mysh', going
back to PIE *muHs- or sim. As PIE /s/ became /sh/ in Slavic after /u/, /i/,
/r/, /k/, "musor" cannot go back to PIE *muHs-; the /s/ goes either back to
PIE /k'/, or the word is a compund of the root quoted by Chernykhov and the
root contained in Russian _ssorit'sja_ "quarrel". I don't have an
etymological dictionary here to check that question.

3. KB:
>So there is some basis to state that this all-Indo-European word cat >in
>all its variations may by descendant of some Indo-European root >with
>meaning "to hit, to strike, to make hole etc". Distant cognate of >this
>hypothetical (?) root may be Watkins's kat- "to fight" and kat- >"down".

<snip>

>Or cut in Chambers Dictionary of Etymology: ,,Probably before 1300 either
>as: cutten <...>, kitten <...>; of >uncertain orrigin (possibly borrowed
>from  Scandinavian source; >compare Swedish dialect kuta, kata "to cut",
>kuta "knife", and >Icelandic kuti "knife". ''

Well, "cut" cannot be a Gmc. cognate of a PIE *kat-, as PIE */k/ gives /h/
in Gmc. in Anlaut position, and /t/ should give /T/ or /D/. The same reason
speaks against deriving the Gmc. cat words from such a PIE root.

One aside - are there any data available for the first recordings of the
_katto- / gatto- _ - word? As already has been stated by Rick Mc Callister
at the start of this thread, the words look too much alike to be of PIE
origin, and I would add that the k/g variation in Greek, as well as between
individual Romance languages (e.g., It. gatto vs. French chat) also are
arguments against an inheritance from PIE. My preference is to see the word
as a loan from a non-IE source, maybe on such a route: (Source language) >
Greek > Romance, Celtic, Gmc, Slavic etc.

4. KB:
>So distant relativeof English cat or Lithuanian kate "male cat" or >Russian
>kot "male cat" may be English kettle, Lithuanian katilas >"kettle": In
>Chambers Dict.of Etym.: ,,kettle -- <...> borrowed directly from Latin
>catillus "small bowl, >dish or plate", diminutive of catinus "bowl, dish,
>pot"; perhaps >cognate with Greek kotyle "small vessel, cup" <...>. ''

Concerning the impossibility of Gmc. /k/ being from PIE /k/ (except if one
uses that other magic wand, a IE substrate language influence), see above.
Lith. "katilas" is most probably a loan from Latin, via Slavic (v. Russian
"kotel", Common Slavic *koti0lu0-) (i0, u0 denoting the front and back yers,
respectively).

5. KB:
>This excerpt from Chambers Dict.of Etym. reminds on my old posting (Lith.
>peilis "knife" <-> Lith. pele "mous"):

>>The similar case is with Lithuanian "peilis" 'knife'. It is similar >>to
>>Russian "pila" 'saw', Lat. "pilum" 'heavy javelin, pestle', OHG "pfil"
>>'arrow, stake'. In this context OE "pil" 'stake, shaft, spike' and Eng
>>"pile" 'arrow, >>dart' >may be not borrowings as it is stated in Chambers
>>Dict. of >>Etym. ( p.794)] but words of common Indo-European origin.

The vocalism speaks against pele and peilis being cognates - there is no PIE
ablaut pattern e-ei. The link peilis - pilum - pila looks possible. Because
of the initial p/pf the English and OHG words have to be loans from Latin.

I hope I did not spoil too much fun by insisting on the observance of sound
laws. But I think if one disregards them, one should give good reasons for
doing so, otherwise we'll very soon arrive again in a state where "in
etymology, vowels mean nothing, and consonants very little".

Best regards,
Hans-Werner Hatting


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Tue Jan  2 04:16:27 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Tue, 2 Jan 2001 04:16:27 -0000
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <TUE.2.JAN.2001.041627.0000.>

On 28 Dec 2000, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

>I looked in Buck and found

>	Latin catulus, catellus "puppy, cub" [Buck 1949: 180]

Various Latin poets use <catulus> to denote the young of pigs, lions,
wolves, and bears. "Puppy, young dog" is evidently a specialization.

>	Rumanian catel, Old Italian catello, Old French cael, obsolete
>French cheau [Buck 1949: 180]
>	Old Norse hadhna "kid", Russian kotot'sja, Polish kocic'sie "bear
>cub" [Buck 1949: 180]
>	Posner also cites Sardinian kateddu "little dog, puppy" < *ket- +
>-ellu [Posner 1996: 86]

This looks like a direct reflex of Lat. <catellus>, given that Sard.
-dd- from Lat. -ll- is regular.

>	which suggests the possibility of
>catulus/catellus > *katlu > *katju/kakju/kacju > *kac^o > cach-orro

>	although I imagine an /e/ would be expected, as in lacte- > leche

Span. -ech- regularly results from Lat. -act-, but other situations
producing Span. -ch- may leave a preceding /a/ unchanged, as <ancho> from
<amplus>, so *cach- <- *catlus <- <catulus> is reasonable. Does anyone know
why <leche> is feminine?

Velazquez (1959) gives 'cub, the young of a beast' as one sense of
<cachorro>, and <cachillada> 'litter, young brought forth by an animal at
once' appears to be based on the same root. As with <catulus>, both generic
and specific meanings are in use.

>	so maybe there was influence from Spanish cazar, Italian cacciare
>"to hunt" < Vulgar Latin *captiare "to hunt" < Latin capio "I take"

>and BIG MAYBE a methathesis (or some type of sequence in which the
>palatalization was scrambled) in Basque > txakur and BIGGER MAYBE a
>backformation to zakur--but I don't expect anyone to take my word without
>proof :>

>	I'd appreciate suggestions

Giovanni Alessio briefly discusses some of these words in his review of
Hubschmid's "Mediterrane Substrate" (St. Etr. XXIX, 1961, pp. 362-79).
Alessio rejects the connection between the Sardo-Corsican dog-terms and
Basque <zakur>, <txakur> on phonetic grounds. He suggests <zakur> might be
derived from a Ligurian form represented by Late Lat. <segusius>, Ital.
<segugio> 'bloodhound'. The vowel-alternation is parallel to Lat. <cerrus> :
Span. <carrasco> 'holm-oak'. Ligurians living near Tartessos are reported by
Steph. Byz. (s.v. Ligustine), and Thuc. (VI.2.2) says the Sicanians claimed
to be Iberians driven from the basin of the Sikanos (mod. Jucar?) by
Ligurians. Alessio thus hypothesizes that the Ligurians brought substratal
forms from the Balkans to southern Spain, whence the Iberians passed some of
them (perhaps including <zakur>) on to the Basques, giving Hubschmid and
others the false impression that Basque itself originated in the East.

>	Does anyone know how recent the terms are in the Balkan and
>Caucasus languages cited?
>	Is it possible that they all spring from a Slavic, Greek or Turkish
>term for a specific type of dog?

The modern Greek, Balkan, and Turkish terms probably come from Common Greek
(kuo:n) <zagraios> '(dog) useful for hunting'. The use of the Aeolic form,
rather than Attic *diagraios, probably reflects an Aeolic predilection for
hunting expressed by <phe:romane:s> 'mad about hunting' which is based on
Aeolic <phe:r> 'wild animal', not on the Attic form <the:r>.

My guess is the Sardo-Corsican terms are also from this Greek source. What
little I have found about Georg. <dzaghli> indicates that it simply means
'dog, Hund' without reference to hunting utility. Georgian dissimilates /r/
to /l/ when another /r/ precedes, but a single /r/ in a word appears to be
stable, so there is no evident basis for connecting <dzaghli> with the other
dog-terms.

DGK


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan  4 00:02:05 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 18:02:05 -0600
Subject: Greek Genitive Plural
Message-ID: <WED.3.JAN.2001.180205.0600.>

        The only reason I know of to think that /s/ once existed in the gen
plural of /a/-stems in Greek is that late PIE apparently did not tolerate
hiatus to the extent that /a-oon/ would mandate, at least not in V-stem
nouns.  Note that even in Sanskrit V-stems, where intrusive /s/ was not used
(not counting some pronouns), it was still evidently felt necessary to begin
the final syl with some consonant, in this case /n/.  It seems that
different branches adopted different solutions to the same perceived
problem.  So we have some indirect evidence of a phonotactic constraint.  I
have not bothered to check the rest of posited PIE morphology to see if this
constraint holds up across the board, though right off the top of my head I
cannot think of any evidence that it does not.

Dr. David L. White


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Jan  4 09:42:56 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 09:42:56 -0000
Subject: Gk gen plural
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.094256.0000.>

> Wouldn't they both end up the same? ...  I'm not sure in what
> circumstances in Greek you could expect to see a difference between the
> result of -aso:m and -aH2o:m.

This was my point.   Several authors confidently assert that the pronominal
ending -asom was adopted into Greek as well as into Latin, but I can see no
evidence for this assertion at all.

The only argument I can see is from probability:  Latin and Greek both
borrow the pronominal nominative plural, Latin/Italic borrows the pronominal
genitive plural, so perhaps Greek also did - but the books seem to make
statements more strongly than that.   (e.g. Szemerenyi p190 "Latin and Greek
... both from -a:som .. the pronominal ending."  Beekes, on the other hand,
avoids this error.)

I'm glad I haven't overlooked some obvious bit of evidence!

Peter


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan  4 00:34:38 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 18:34:38 -0600
Subject: Anthony as Greek?
Message-ID: <WED.3.JAN.2001.183438.0600.>

> Let me apologize, but it is escaping me why "Anthony" cannot come from Gk
> <anthos> or <antho:n>.   Aeschylus before 400BC already uses the term to
> also denote "pride", "honor" and "height of achievement".  It was also used
> to connote "brightness" or "brilliance."  Parallel the name with Gk
> <stephanos>, garland, and the fact that <Stephanus> appears as a Roman name
> at least by the first century BC.

> Is there a clear reason why Ant[h]onius cannot be Greek?

        Not an overwhelmingly clear reason, perhaps, but "Antonius", sans
"h", is a Roman family name presumably of some ancientry (since Roman
families were not made up anew, not that I ever heard of anyway).
"Stephanus", by contrast, is a given or personal name, so the analogy is not
quite exact.  But since Roman family names were (I vaguely recall) fairly
often of Etruscan origin, and the Etruscans probably came from the Eastern
Mediterranean, is seems within the range of possibility the Roman name could
ultimately go back to the same source, perhaps one of those Mediterranean
words like "olive".    I am not aware of any evidence that the word is
legitimately IE, though it may be.

Dr. David L. White


From BMScott at stratos.net  Thu Jan  4 20:18:47 2001
From: BMScott at stratos.net (Brian M. Scott)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 15:18:47 -0500
Subject: Anthony as Greek?
In-Reply-To: <a5.f804950.277e1c9a@aol.com>
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.151847.0500.>

On Friday, 29 December, 2000, at 11:58:02, Steve Long wrote:

SL> Let me apologize, but it is escaping me why "Anthony" cannot come
SL> from Gk <anthos> or <antho:n>.  [...] Is there a clear reason why
SL> Ant[h]onius cannot be Greek?

Roman (as distinct from medieval) <Antonius> and its derivatives
rather consistently appear with <t>, not the <th> that one would
expect in a borrowing of Gk <anth->. And it seems to be borrowed into
Greek with tau, not theta: according to Morlet (Les noms de personne
sur le territoire de l'ancienne Gaule du VIe au XIIe si?cle, I:20a),
H. Dessau (Inscriptiones latinae selectae) cites two Greek
transcriptions of <Antoninus>, both with <'Anto:->, and Russian
<Anton(ij)> is apparently from Greek <Anto:nios>.

Brian M. Scott


From Georg at home.ivm.de  Thu Jan  4 00:56:57 2001
From: Georg at home.ivm.de (Stefan Georg)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 01:56:57 +0100
Subject: Meaning of "Goth"
In-Reply-To: <001701c0729f$e79a75c0$f16163d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.015657.0100.>

>         By the way (displaying my ignorance here), how does OHG "kans"
>appear as modern German "gans"?  Did only the /d/ -> /t/ part of this shift
>get fully established in standard German?

It's OHG, MHG, and NHG /gans/.
--
Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra?e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From vistasjy at md.prestige.net  Thu Jan  4 04:07:54 2001
From: vistasjy at md.prestige.net (JohnYY)
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 23:07:54 -0500
Subject: The sun never sets ...
Message-ID: <WED.3.JAN.2001.230754.0500.>

We are discussing the linguistics of a mythic locale - I believe that
Bombay is no more, having been replaced officially by something like
"Mumbai".


From bronto at pobox.com  Thu Jan  4 04:41:57 2001
From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood)
Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 20:41:57 -0800
Subject: II subgroups
Message-ID: <WED.3.JAN.2001.204157.0800.>

rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu wrote:
> Try:
> http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/didact/karten/indi/indicm.htm
> for a map and accompanying classifications, albeit in German.

Thanks!  Some of it is hard to read, but it'll do for most purposes.

--
Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan  4 19:18:46 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 20:18:46 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.201846.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Sent: Friday, December 29, 2000 9:32 PM

> On 22 Dec 2000, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

>> And the (in origin Anatolian) Etruscans are linguistically second cousins of
>> the Italic speaking peoples, so the search for the roots of the latter day
>> Antonii (etc...) risks becoming cyclical ('cercle vicieux').

> This is the second time in a month you have represented this flimsy
> hypothesis of Etruscans coming from Anatolia as though it were an
> established fact. If you actually have any non-cyclical arguments
> (preferably linguistic) in favor of an eastern homeland for the Etruscans,
> perhaps you could post them here or on the other list.

> Doug Kilday

> [ Moderator's note:
>   The hypothesis that the Etruscans may have originated in Anatolia appears
>   to be supported by the presence on the island of Lemnos of a stele
>   inscribed in a language clearly related to but differing from the Etruscan
>   of Italy.
>   --rma ]

[Ed Selleslagh]

I thought this was something of majority view. Of course, final proof is hard
to get by, and one should keep an open mind. I'll give you some arguments, but
I don't intend to start a new thread on this.

The moderator's note is indeed the main argument. The stele found near Kaminia
on Lemnos (by G. Cousin and F. D?rrbach in 1885) dates from the 6th or 7th c.
B.C. The spelling differences (with Etruscan) can probably be explained by the
different alphabet and the phonetic evolution during several centuries of
separation (the date of arrival of the Etruscan's forefathers is rather
unclear: the estimates vary from the 13th to the 6th c. B.C. But they seem to
have arrived after the Umbrians had already established themselves in the later
Etruria: the river now called Ombrone seems to bear their name). Example: Etr.
<auils> - Lemn. <awidz> (probably meaning 'year(s)').

The general aspect of the language is flecting, with elements that recall (P)IE
(e.g. -c, Lat. -que, Greek -te, but that could be contamination), but more
similar to e.g. Lydian (-l, -s genitives), apparently with a strong initial
accent and pileups of consonants. In short: like a cousin rather than a
descendant of ('narrow') PIE.

A few years ago, M. Carrasquer made a tentative family tree I will send you
privately since this list doesn't allow it.

There are also non-linguistic arguments, like the bronze liver of Piacenza,
used as a model by Etruscan fortune tellers, which has N. Mesopotamian
characteristics. Or the considerable Greek content of Etruscan culture.

Although this isn't really an argument, I would like to add this:

It is possible that the Eneid (Aeneis) is at least in part based upon the
actual voyage of the Etruscans' forefathers to Italy, but that is only an
educated guess. Anyway, the route is about right, and the fantasy world it
depicts in places sounds like that of Jason's voyage to the Black Sea, or the
Odyssee. And its source is popular Roman tradition, that speaks of a landing of
a people on or near the Latium coast; Etruscan Caere (now Cerveteri) is not far
from Rome, and the earliest known rulers of Rome (itself an Etruscan name:
Ruma) were the Etruscan kings. So, it is entirely possible, even likely, that
the Romans confounded Etruscans and Italic peoples of the earliest period
covered by tradition.

All this means is that probably some people from the north-eastern
Mediterranean arrived in Latium or thereabout in or before the earliest days of
the Roman tradition.

Ed.


From petegray at btinternet.com  Thu Jan  4 16:23:26 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 16:23:26 -0000
Subject: minimal pairs
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.162326.0000.>

>...Etruscans coming from Anatolia

In addition to the traditions that Etruscans came from Anatolia, and Romans
came from Troy, there is a tradition that the Trojans themselves originated
in Italy!   Iasius was the brother of Dardanus, and both were believed to
have travelled from Italy to Samothrace, then to Troy, where they founded
the Trojan race.  You'll see a reference to it in Vergil, Aeneid 3:168.

Peter


From jozo.kapovic at zg.tel.hr  Thu Jan  4 13:33:49 2001
From: jozo.kapovic at zg.tel.hr (=?windows-1250?Q?Mate_Kapovi=E6?=)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 14:33:49 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.143349.0100.>

-----Original Message-----
From: X99Lynx at aol.com <X99Lynx at aol.com>
Date: 2001. sije?anj 04 04:11

[Steve Long]
<Also, attested is "Gk <churra>, a call used by swineherds;
<churrabios>, swine-collar; <churrabos>, a bird."  Cf., Pol <kura>, hen.<

Polish kura is from all-Slavic *kur7 probably meaning "rooster, cock >
penis". It's probably of onomatopoeic origin, although there have been some
comparisons of Slavic *kur7va (< *kur7) "whore" with that eng. word - whore,
(Germ. H?re) which is very doubtful.


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu Jan  4 15:56:29 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 10:56:29 EST
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro...
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.105629.EST.>

In a message dated 1/3/2001 9:37:58 PM, jozo.kapovic at zg.tel.hr writes:
<< it's hard to believe that *kotiti seN ("to bear cub (for some animals)") a
would have come from *kot7, because cats were not so (economically)
important. Some contamination of the roots has almost certainly been present.
>>

Just a note to point out again that the "semantic" end is not one that can be
handled so easily.  The "importance" of the cat, as well as how that word was
used to describe animals, is pretty much opaque to us.  There are dozens of
ways the term could have been transferred that are not within our modern
understanding.  It's pertinent to remember that for example the historic word
"cattle" in English can be traced with some precision not to livestock, but
to a legal term for personal property.  Its use to describe bovines is fairly
recent.  If the preliterate word "cat" referred to a function of an animal or
a matter of property or status or a place of origin, then we may be at a loss
to know how the transfer of meaning occurred.  Such uncertainty should
caution our willingness to eliminate paths of development on simple semantic
impressions.

Regards,
Steve Long


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan  4 19:28:26 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 20:28:26 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.202826.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 02, 2001 5:16 AM

> On 28 Dec 2000, Rick Mc Callister wrote:
[snip]

>>  Posner also cites Sardinian kateddu "little dog, puppy" < *ket- +
>> -ellu [Posner 1996: 86]

> This looks like a direct reflex of Lat. <catellus>, given that Sard.
> -dd- from Lat. -ll- is regular.

>> which suggests the possibility of
>> catulus/catellus > *katlu > *katju/kakju/kacju > *kac^o > cach-orro

>> although I imagine an /e/ would be expected, as in lacte- > leche

> Span. -ech- regularly results from Lat. -act-, but other situations
> producing Span. -ch- may leave a preceding /a/ unchanged, as <ancho> from
> <amplus>, so *cach- <- *catlus <- <catulus> is reasonable. Does anyone know
> why <leche> is feminine?

[Snip]

> DGK

[Ed Selleslagh]
Just a few thoughts. Don't crucify me for it.

Maybe we should write: *cacho < *catlo < catulum (acc.). The -orro goes back to
the Mediterranean infix -rr-, which expresses an exaggerated quality, and is
hence often augmentative/pejorative, cf. Cast. 'ventorro'. See the article "Los
vocablos en -rr- de la lengua sarda. Conexiones con la pen?nsula ib?rica",
by Mary Carmen Iribarren Argaiz, in Fontes Linguae Vasconum 76 (sept-dec 1997),
pp. 335-354.

Why is 'leche' feminine? In general, grammatical gender of certain classes of
Spanish words (e.g.-or) is rather unstable or variable, although in the latter
case different genders for the same word express different shades. Examples:

-To sailors 'la mar' is feminine, to the rest of us it is masculine 'el mar'.
In French 'la mer' is always feminine, and in Latin 'mare' is neuter.(Cf.
'ship' in English)

-'la calor' is unbearable, but 'el calor', the normal kind, may be pleasant (in
increasing order of unpleasantness: el calor, la calor, los calores, las
calores, according to Spanish friends of mine, and slightly tongue-in-cheek).
In French, 'la chaleur' is always feminine.

Maybe 'la leche' is just the natural thing to say, isn't it ?  I mean to people
who speak a language that seems to treat grammatical gender rather loosely, at
least historically (Maybe a Basque influence on early Castilian? Basque only
distinguishes animate/inanimate). Milk is strongly linked to female mammals. In
(modern) Greek they say 'thilik?' (<the:lyke:) for 'feminine gender', which
is derived from the word for 'nipple, breast'.

Ed.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Jan  4 19:41:17 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 14:41:17 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
In-Reply-To: <F212bkA5JIzpNcedZho0000d5e6@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.4.JAN.2001.144117.0500.>

[snip]

[DGK]
> Does anyone know why <leche> is feminine?

	There is a group of Latin neuters that became feminine in Spanish &
Portuguese and masculine in French and Italian. I seem to remember Posner
saying something to the extent that [in some cases] Spanish evidently
derived feminine forms from the plurals while French and Italian derived
masculine forms from the singulars

[snip]

>Giovanni Alessio briefly discusses some of these words in his review of
>Hubschmid's "Mediterrane Substrate" (St. Etr. XXIX, 1961, pp. 362-79).
>Alessio rejects the connection between the Sardo-Corsican dog-terms and
>Basque <zakur>, <txakur> on phonetic grounds. He suggests <zakur> might be
>derived from a Ligurian form represented by Late Lat. <segusius>, Ital.
><segugio> 'bloodhound'.

	Corominas is locked up in the library for the next week or so, so I
hope you don't mind me asking how and if Spanish sabueso "bloodhound" is
derived from segusius. It looks possible but messy: I can see sabueso from
something like *sagu"eso < *sagOso- but it gives an open /O/, rather than
closed /o/ that would be expected from /u/
	Or is it directly from substrate?

>The vowel-alternation is parallel to Lat. <cerrus> :
>Span. <carrasco> 'holm-oak'. Ligurians living near Tartessos are reported by
>Steph. Byz. (s.v. Ligustine), and Thuc. (VI.2.2) says the Sicanians claimed
>to be Iberians driven from the basin of the Sikanos (mod. Jucar?) by
>Ligurians. Alessio thus hypothesizes that the Ligurians brought substratal
>forms from the Balkans to southern Spain, whence the Iberians passed some of
>them (perhaps including <zakur>) on to the Basques, giving Hubschmid and
>others the false impression that Basque itself originated in the East.

	So Alessio proposed the Lusitanians = "IE Ligurians" = Illyrians
hypothesis? By "IE Ligurians", I mean the non-Celtic, non-Italic IE
speakers of N Italy & S France
	I've also seen claims that the Sikani themselves were Ligurians
based on toponymic similarities between names in Sicily and Liguria

[snip]

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


From mcv at wxs.nl  Wed Jan 10 02:28:34 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 03:28:34 +0100
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
In-Reply-To: <F164okPcFOPgWqL0keH00002305@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.032834.0100.>

On Mon, 18 Dec 2000 03:30:12 -0000, "Douglas G Kilday"
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

Sorry for the late reply, I was away for three weeks.

>Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (5 Dec 2000) wrote:

>>As I may have mentioned here earlier, I have been investigating the
>>possible ramifications of hypothesizing that not only *k/*g/*gh had
>>labialized (*kw/*gw/*ghw) and palatalized (*k^/*g^/*gh^) variants, but
>>that this was originally the case for *all* (pre-)PIE consonants.

>>One interesting possibility is **pw, which would have mostly merged
>>with *kw (for obvious reasons, a labialized labial would have been a
>>highly marked phoneme), but with *p in (pre-)Germanic.

>I'm not comfortable with double stars, but *pw in Early PIE which merged
>with *p in Pre-Germanic and with *kw in most other dialects  makes sense.

Thanks for the support :-).

>>This could be the case in the words "liver", "four", "-leven, -lve",
>> >"oven", "wolf" and some others ("leave", "sieve", etc.).

>I would add the tail-end of "five"; Goth. <fimf> suggests Early PIE *pempwe.

It would be a candidate, were it not that I rather like the idea of
*pen-kwe "...and five" (an etymology similar to that of "ampersand").

>>I'm not too pleased with "bane", however, being from the same root as
>> >*gunT- "Kampf, Schlacht", which means a putative **bhwen- (for PIE
>> >*ghwen) "to kill" is out of the question.  Not that it matters for
>> >judging the etymology by its own merits...

>I don't follow this.

I meant that *if* "bane" and <gunT-> are from the same root, it would
ruin my theory, which requires *bhw-words to be etymologically
distinct from *ghw-words (and similarly *pw- and *kw-words).

>In my opinion, PIE roots containing a labialized aspirate (traditional *gwh)
>which becomes Gmc. *w are most easily explained by assuming that the Early
>PIE root had *bhw. The phonetic realization in Early Gmc. was probably close
>to [vw], and this could plausibly have been reduced to [w]. In "mainstream"
>PIE, *bhw merged with *ghw. I hypothesize:

>  Lat. <formus>, Gk. <thermos>, Skt. <gharmas>, OE <wearm> <- *bhwermos
>  Lat. <nivis>, <ninguit>, Gk. <niphei>, OE <sni:wan> <- *sneibhw-
>  Lat. <nefrendes>, Gk. <nephroi>, ME <nere>, Ger. <Niere> <- *nebhwr-

>Early PIE *dhw may be represented in "deer", OE <de:or>, assuming this is
>connected with Lat. <ferus>, Gk. <the:r>. The latter has the Aeolic form
><phe:r> which suggests a PIE labialized aspirate, just as Aeol. <pisures>
>'four', <pempe> 'five' have <p> for Attic <t> where PIE had a labialized
>stop. I would refer "deer" to *dhwer- which became *ghwer- in "mainstream"
>PIE.

Interesting.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From hstahlke at gw.bsu.edu  Sun Jan  7 01:46:37 2001
From: hstahlke at gw.bsu.edu (Herb Stahlke)
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 20:46:37 -0500
Subject: Meaning of ``Goth``
Message-ID: <SAT.6.JAN.2001.204637.0500.>

I  don't know Germanic linguistics well, but could /kans/ be
something Notker would have written?

Herb Stahlke

<<< Georg at home.ivm.de  1/ 6  8:37p >>>
>         By the way (displaying my ignorance here), how does OHG
"kans"
>appear as modern German "gans"?  Did only the /d/ -> /t/ part of
this shift
>get fully established in standard German?

It's OHG, MHG, and NHG /gans/.
--
Dr. Stefan Georg
Heerstra_e 7
D-53111 Bonn
FRG
Tel./Fax +49-228-691332


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Tue Jan  9 05:27:55 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 00:27:55 EST
Subject: Early Goths as Drinkers
Message-ID: <TUE.9.JAN.2001.002755.EST.>

In a message dated 1/3/2001 7:43:25 PM, dlwhite at texas.net writes:
<< But since the "pour" word and the "god" word seem to be different
extensions of the same root, it is difficult to tell. >>

As I mentioned earlier, there is the Gothic verb <us-gutan> 'pour out' that
is at the prime basis of seeing "Goth" as stemming from a flooded area or a
different kind of pouring (in the works of such as the Swedish scholar
Thorsten Andersson > "both Goetar, Proto-Germanic *gautoz, and Goths, Gutar,
Proto-Germanic *gutaniz, are nomina agentis based on different ablaut grades
of the verb Sw. gjuta, Germ. gie?en 'to pour', in the sense of 'to pour out
semen'....")

Because I have, perhaps for only personal reasons, problems with the Goths
naming themselves either the "flood people" or the "semen people,"  I've
tried to look again at the notion that the Gothic name is not a self-name and
therefore perhaps not Germanic in origin.   I have no idea how to judge how
much the name itself is younger than PIE or some intermediate European
proto-language.  But there are some paths that might make some sense in terms
of the historical and archaeological evidence.  As early as there is anything
involving the name or anything like it (Gotones, Gythones or even Getae), the
Greeks are the primary source, of course.

Looking at this "pour" idea as an origin brings up a number of different
possibilities.  The early Goths -- as they are understood now in the
Cernjachov culture-- are associated with a good deal of metalcraft and
religious practices.  So perhaps there's something to "pouring" metal or
burial mounds that works a little better than the ideas mentioned above.

But one of the paths that's interesting are Greek words that circle around
one or the other forms of the Goth name and that refer to making and drinking
alcohol.

<Che:o> was a main Greek verb for pour, taking many forms and meanings. In
the passive and aorist, it actually took the form <chut->, and we also have
the rather common participle, <chutos>, poured.

<ekchutos> meant 'poured forth, unconfined', but was also used as
'immoderate' and as the title of a classical treatise on wine making.
<oinochutos> was poured wine.   <oinodochutos>, a cupbearer.  <choe:>
specifically meant a pouring out of liquid, drink-offering, "especially made
to the dead or over their graves."

Much more specific about drinking is a string of fairly early words more
related to the shape and contents of the vessel than to its pour:

<ko:tho:n, -o:nos> was a Spartan drinking cup used by soldiers and made of
earthenware or metal.
<ko:tho:n> is defined in L&S as "a deep potation", but not of wine.
<ko:tho:nizo:> is defined as "make drunken" and, in the passive, as "drink
hard".
<keko:tho:nismenos>, inebriated.
<ko:tha> as a <pote:ria>, a drinking-cup.
<kuttoi> as "receptacles."
There is also the difficult-to-explain drinking and betting game of
<kottabus>.

Another group of words (most from at least the 3d century BC) that were
apparently unrelated are also interesting:
<zuthos> defined as "an Egyptian kind of beer, brewed with barley," but also
as "the beer of northern nations."
<zutas> was a brewer (cf., <zumoo:> leaven, ferment)
<zutopo:lis> a woman who sells beer
<zutopo:lion> a beer-shop
<zute:ra> a tax on beer

Is there any possibility that some of these Greek words made their way
northward or northeastward or vice versa or back and forth in the centuries
before the "Goths" appear on the scene?  Could any of this go back to an
ancestor language?  Were these people, later called the Goths, remembered
most in the Greek consciousness or their own as notable brewers or consumers
of such beverages?  On the theory that the exceptional product of a land
precedes knowledge of the people themselves?  Who showed up to brew this
"beer of the northern nations" in Greece at least by the 3d century BC?

And, of course, could any of this make linguistic sense?

Regards,
Steve Long


From sarima at friesen.net  Sun Jan  7 02:37:17 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 18:37:17 -0800
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
In-Reply-To: <00ae01c07684$91938a20$a006703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <SAT.6.JAN.2001.183717.0800.>

At 08:18 PM 1/4/01 +0100, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:
>... different alphabet and the phonetic evolution during several centuries of
>separation (the date of arrival of the Etruscan's forefathers is rather
>unclear: the estimates vary from the 13th to the 6th c. B.C. But they seem to
>have arrived after the Umbrians had already established themselves in the
>later
>Etruria: the river now called Ombrone seems to bear their name). Example: Etr.
><auils> - Lemn. <awidz> (probably meaning 'year(s)').

Hmm, is there any other evidence for the Umbrians preceding the Etruscans
in Etruria?  If this is really what happened it tends to remove the main
objections to the Villanova Culture being associated with Italic speakers.

[It also fits with my ideas about the origin of the italic peoples: if I am
right than the earlier dates for the arrival of the Etruscans would also be
ruled out, leaving circa 8th to 6th c. B.C.].

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From dlwhite at texas.net  Sun Jan  7 02:54:44 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 20:54:44 -0600
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <SAT.6.JAN.2001.205444.0600.>

        It should also be noted that the words "Trojan" and "Etruscan", not
to mention "Tuscan", "Tyrrhenian", and "Tursha" (an Egyptian term for "Sea
Peoples", who were clearly from the Eastern Med), are quite possibly variant
forms of a single word.  "Tarquin" and "Tarsus" might possibly be added to
the list.  But we've been through this before.
        Does anyone out there know where in the Aeneid Lemnos is mentioned?
I have not been able to find it.

Dr. David L. White


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Sun Jan  7 03:38:13 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 21:38:13 -0600
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <SAT.6.JAN.2001.213813.0600.>

Dear Eduard and IEists:

----- Original Message -----
From: "Eduard Selleslagh" <edsel at glo.be>
Sent: Thursday, January 04, 2001 1:18 PM

And its source is popular Roman tradition, that speaks of a landing of a people
on or near the Latium coast; Etruscan Caere (now Cerveteri) is not far from
Rome, and the earliest known rulers of Rome (itself an Etruscan name:  Ruma)
were the Etruscan kings. So, it is entirely possible, even likely, that the
Romans confounded Etruscans and Italic peoples of the earliest period covered
by tradition.

[PR]
Could you tell me the source for the opinion that Roma is derived from
Etruscan Ruma? And what is it supposed to mean?

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit
ec at ec hecc, vindga meipi a netr allar nmo, geiri vnda~r . . . a ~eim
mei~i, er mangi veit, hvers hann af rstom renn." (Havamal 138)


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Sun Jan  7 15:59:44 2001
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 10:59:44 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <SUN.7.JAN.2001.105944.0500.>

Georgiev has a chapter on this topic in his An Introduction to the History of
the Indo-European Languages. Sofia:  Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. (1981).
My own knowledge of ths topic is rather weak.  Any comments on Georgiev's
proposals (which do look quite solid)?

----Original Message-----
From: Eduard Selleslagh <edsel at glo.be>
To: Indo-European Mailing List <Indo-European at xkl.com>
Date: Saturday, January 06, 2001 9:42 PM
Subject: Re: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)

[ moderator snip ]

[Ed Selleslagh]

I thought this was something of majority view. Of course, final proof is hard
to get by, and one should keep an open mind. I'll give you some arguments, but
I don't intend to start a new thread on this.

[ moderator snip ]


From stevegus at aye.net  Sun Jan  7 21:40:53 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 16:40:53 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <SUN.7.JAN.2001.164053.0500.>

Ed Selleslagh wrote:

<<The general aspect of the language is flecting, with elements that recall
(P)IE
(e.g. -c, Lat. -que, Greek -te, but that could be contamination), but more
similar to e.g. Lydian (-l, -s genitives), apparently with a strong initial
accent and pileups of consonants. In short: like a cousin rather than a
descendant of ('narrow') PIE.>>

There are a number of things about Etruscan that suggest some kind of
relationship to PIE.

There seems to be some kind of inherited pattern of ablaut in several
lexical items in Etruscan: e.g. nom. clan, gen. clens, dat. clensi, nom. pl.
clenar, "son."  The noun endings themselves (-s genitive, -si dative, -ar
[from *-az or *-ans?] plural) seem to strongly resemble what has happened in
other IE languages.  A locative case or derived adjective predictably ends
in -ti or -thi.

Etruscan feminines typically end in -i or -a, resembling the two thematic
feminine types in Sanskrit.  (Uni, Ati, Menrva, Klutmsta)

Some pronouns: 1st sing. nom. mi, acc. mini.  3d sing an (he, she), in (it).
"This" is ita or eta; also ica or eca.  Accusatives of these add -n.

Adjectives derived from nouns usually add -iu or -(e)na; e.g. the family
name of Lars Porsena, and such Etruscan-Latin names as Furius.

Verbs show an apparently consistent past in -ce: turce (he, she, it gave);
svalce (he, she, it lived).  A possible sigmatic aorist?  especially since
some historians of Romance have blamed the palatalisation of Latin 'c' on
the Etruscans.  Imperatives show either a naked stem (tur!) or the
ending -thi.

The numerals, as is well known, hardly look IE, but you do have: 7 semph,
and 9 nurph.  7 *sep-, *seb- seems to be common Mediterranean as well as IE.

I have wondered about whether the Etruscans are somehow related to the
proto-Germans.  Like the Germans who must have spoken PIE with a terrible
brogue, the Etruscans seem to have done great phonetic violence to Greek
words they imported.  Klytaimnestra = Clutmsta,  Herakles = Hercle,
Menelaos = Menle, Polydeuces = Pulutuk, Diomedes = Zimite.  These names also
make you wonder whether their script was somehow inadequately supplied with
vowels, or made heavy use of abbreviated forms.

Much of Etruscan inflection and derivation, in so far as we can figure it
out at this remove, looks like a well-worn IE language of relatively recent
date.  So do most of their pronouns and particles.  It's the Etruscan
vocabulary that no one has yet been able to figure.

--
    We will walk into the snow, and we will keep walking, until
    we reach the grey horizon.

    Ceterum censeo sedem Romanam esse delendam.


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Tue Jan  9 15:35:58 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 9 Jan 2001 10:35:58 EST
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <TUE.9.JAN.2001.103558.EST.>

In a message dated 1/6/2001 9:22:03 PM, edsel at glo.be writes:
<< the date of arrival of the Etruscan's forefathers is rather unclear: the
estimates vary from the 13th to the 6th c. B.C.>>

Archaeologically, it seems that it is difficult to distinguish Etruscans in
terms of the surrounding Villanovan culture before the early 8th century.
Beginning at that time certain distinctive features -- many of them Asian --
begin to emerge that will mark Etruscan culture in later centuries, including
their unique grid-like urban system.   As far as consensus goes, most
historians would probably agree that "the Etruscans as we know them represent
a combination of elements from Asia Minor and local Villanovan, with a strong
infusion of Greek culture for good measure."

Long before the Lemnos inscription, of course, Herodotus had told us that the
Etruscans came from Lydia.

Regards,
Steve Long


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sun Jan  7 01:57:08 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 20:57:08 -0500
Subject: dulcis/lac?
In-Reply-To: <3A53FF15.678B05B9@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.6.JAN.2001.205708.0500.>

	I noticed that Buck [among others] suggests
Latin dulcis & Greek gluku/s < *dluk-
	I'm wondering if there's any possibility of
Latin lac, lact- & Greek gala, galakt- < *dlak-
	I've also seen Latin loquor linked to [something like] Gaelic tlu-,
and English talk

	thanx

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


From dlwhite at texas.net  Sun Jan  7 06:55:32 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 00:55:32 -0600
Subject: IE 'wolf'
Message-ID: <SUN.7.JAN.2001.005532.0600.>

        With regard to the 'wolf' thing a while back, where it was stated
that Latin "lupus" is borrowed from a /p/-dialect of Italic, Germanic "wolf"
and so on appear to be the expected Germanic cognates of Latin, "vulpes".
If this is so, then unless I am missing something (a very real possibility),
the /-p/ here is original, as Germanic /kw/ does not (to my knowledge)
change into either /p/ before the shift or /f/ after it.  It is generally
recognized (I think) that Latin "lupus" and "vulpes" are tabu variants of
the same word.  That the original ordering was /wl/ rather than /lu/ is
suggested by Sanskrit "vrka-" and Lithuanian (if memory serves) "vlka-",
which almost have to be the same word as Greek "luko-".   So it would seem
then that both 1) the ordering of /l/ and /w-u/ and 2) the choice of /p/ or
/kw/ as the final C were subject to variation that is the result of tabu
deformation, not sound change.  Unless it can be shown that forms with /kw/
clearly did come down into Latin, or that /p/ in such positions was, like
/f/ in "bufo", not the regular development, there is, as far as I can see,
little reason to insist that the Latin forms were borrowed from /p/-Italic.
        I say all this with very little confidence:  correct me if I am
wrong.

Dr. David L. White


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sun Jan  7 20:11:16 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 15:11:16 -0500
Subject: cat < ?
In-Reply-To: <3A53FF15.678B05B9@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <SUN.7.JAN.2001.151116.0500.>

cat seems to be one of the most problematic of all animal names

	Corominas says cattus "wildcat" was first documented in late Latin
4th c. and springs from an unknown source [Corominas 1980]
	Buck (1949: 182) goes back to Greek k?ttos, k?tta, g?ttos from an
unknown source
	He also gives Latvian kak'is, kak'e "cat" [Buck 1949: 182]
	Entwistle (1936: 40-41) derives it from Gaulish cattu
	Gamkrelidze & Ivanov (1995: 515) (English trans.) offer
Indo-European *khath "cat", possibly from Nubian kadi:s
	G & I also list Arabic kitt, Aramaic katta, Georgian katla, Laz
k'at'u, Kabardian gedu, Dido gedu, Avar keto, Turkish kedi [Gamkrelidze &
Ivanov 1995: 515]

	General lore has domestic cats originating in North Africa; but
wildcats are almost universal.
	So is IE *khath "cat" plausible?
	My problem is that the cat words all look too much alike.
	I'm trying to imagine how a Nubian word would have made it into
early IE. Is the ancient Berber/Libyan word known? Egyptian was something
like miu, wasn't it?
	If it's from Gaulish; could it be derived from catu- "fighter"? -I
remenber seeing a similar sounding word meaning "stealthy" or whatnot. Both
of these describe tomcats pretty well.

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


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Mon Jan  8 07:08:15 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Mon, 8 Jan 2001 02:08:15 EST
Subject: Anthony as Greek?
Message-ID: <MON.8.JAN.2001.020815.EST.>

In a message dated 1/6/2001 7:56:06 PM, BMScott at stratos.net writes:
<< Roman (as distinct from medieval) <Antonius> and its derivatives rather
consistently appear with <t>, not the <th> that one would expect in a
borrowing of Gk <anth->.>>

But that may be a function of how early the name entered Latin.   Early names
that show Greek origins do not necessarily observe the later Roman respect
for Greek spellings, e.g., the volcanic <Aetna> from the Gr <aitho:n, aithe:>
'burning', but see the Latin <Aethon> for later imported names from Classical
Greek mythology.  Other examples might include Latin <antelii> a word for the
ancient custom of placing images near the doorway of homes, from the Gr
<anthe:lioi>; Latin <tus, ture>, incense, from the Gr <thuos>; and even
possibly a name for the Etruscans themselves, <Tusci> which is also attested
as <Thusci>.

One of the things it is easy to forget is that the Greeks were in contact
with both Rome and the Etruscans at an extremely early date.  A major Greek
colony near Naples, Pithekoussai, was founded about 750 BC.  And among the
earliest "Roman" burials on Esquiline hill, numbers of Corinthian "olpe" urns
have been found, including one that is inscribed with apparently the Greek
name "Ktektos" dating from about 725BC.  Such contact precedes by many
centuries the first appearance of the name Anthony.

Whether through the Etruscans or directly, there is clear evidence that the
Greeks were there not long after the iron age started and had a considerable
technical and cultural influence on the region before we have any evidence of
Latin literacy.

<Anthoun->, the present participle of <antheo:>, flourishing, blossoming,
bright, etc. (or perhaps just flower growering) could have entered Latin
early enough to have been adapted to the Latin sound preferences, and before
the Romans had become careful about their borrowings from Greek.  The absence
of a clear alternative origin might suggest that a Greek origin shouldn't be
dismissed too confidently on the basis of /t/ versus /th/ distinction that
early Romans did not always observe well themselves. (Cf., <Atys/Athys>)

<<And it seems to be borrowed into Greek with tau, not theta: according to
Morlet (Les noms de personne sur le territoire de l'ancienne Gaule du VIe au
XIIe si?cle, I:20a), H. Dessau (Inscriptiones latinae selectae) cites two
Greek transcriptions of <Antoninus>, both with <'Anto:-> >>

Would it be expected that the Greeks would recovert a family name back to a
Greek pronunciation or written form once it became an established
centuries-old Roman name?  It would be like the French translating back an
English family name like Williams into its French original.  This would be
unusual in any circumstance, but especially in the case of imperial Romans
names.

Regards,
Steve Long


From colkitto at sprint.ca  Sun Jan  7 14:04:27 2001
From: colkitto at sprint.ca (Robert Orr)
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 09:04:27 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro...
Message-ID: <SUN.7.JAN.2001.090427.0500.>

>The word shchenit'sja means 'to bear cub; to cub, to whelp' in Russian
>(shchenok 'dog cub'),
>and Russian kotit'sja means 'to bear kitten (about cats) or other youngling
>(about small carnivorous mammal - ferret etc)'.
>It is a general model for creation of words that mean 'to bear younglings'.
>The Russian telit'sja means 'to bear calve (of cattle, deer etc.)'
>(telionok 'calf'),
>zherebit'sja 'to bear colt' (zherebenok 'colt'),
>yagnit'sja 'to bear lamb' (yagnionok 'lamb')...

>The were wild cats (Felis silvestris) in East European forests.

And there still are in the Scottish Highlands

Robert Orr


From petegray at btinternet.com  Sun Jan  7 16:20:10 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2001 16:20:10 -0000
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <SUN.7.JAN.2001.162010.0000.>

> There is a group of Latin neuters that became feminine in Spanish &
> Portuguese and masculine in French and Italian. I seem to remember Posner
> saying something to the extent that [in some cases] Spanish evidently
> derived feminine forms from the plurals while French and Italian derived
> masculine forms from the singulars

My copy of Posner's The Romance Languages has a mention of la leche on page
135, but no discussion of this process of origin.  She does, however,
mention that some Latin neuters "hesitated in gender" even within Latin -
and this is probably the origin of divergent outcomes.

Peter


From dalazal at hotmail.com  Thu Jan 11 01:38:40 2001
From: dalazal at hotmail.com (Diogo Almeida)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 20:38:40 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.203840.0500.>

>From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
>Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 14:41:17 -0500

>[DGK]
> > Does anyone know why <leche> is feminine?
>
>	There is a group of Latin neuters that became feminine in Spanish &
>Portuguese and masculine in French and Italian.

But "leite" (portuguese for "leche") is masculine ("o leite"), and I'm
pretty sure that it is masculine both in Brazilian and European Portuguese.


From bronto at pobox.com  Sun Jan  7 02:22:38 2001
From: bronto at pobox.com (Anton Sherwood)
Date: Sat, 6 Jan 2001 18:22:38 -0800
Subject: The sun never sets ...
Message-ID: <SAT.6.JAN.2001.182238.0800.>

JohnYY wrote:
> We are discussing the linguistics of a mythic locale - I believe
> that Bombay is no more, having been replaced officially by something
> like "Mumbai".

In that case I'll settle for an old map!  ;)

--
Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/


From douglas at nb.net  Wed Jan 10 22:42:10 2001
From: douglas at nb.net (Douglas G. Wilson)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 17:42:10 -0500
Subject: Etruscans
In-Reply-To: <000b01c07855$31861d00$226163d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.174210.0500.>

>         Does anyone out there know where in the Aeneid Lemnos is mentioned?
>I have not been able to find it.

A tangential reference, I think, Aeneid 8.454:

"Haec pater Aeoliis properat dum Lemnius oris, ..."

-- Doug Wilson


From ipse at hevanet.com  Thu Jan 11 01:36:43 2001
From: ipse at hevanet.com (ipse)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 17:36:43 -0800
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.173643.0800.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "David L. White" <dlwhite at texas.net>
Subject: Re: Etruscans

> Does anyone out there know where
> in the Aeneid Lemnos is mentioned?

Aeneid VIII. 454
Haec pater Aeoliis properat dum Lemnius oris,
is the only verse which contains the stem 'Lemn-'.

David Jensen


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 11 11:23:37 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 12:23:37 +0100
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.122337.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "David L. White" <dlwhite at texas.net>
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 3:54 AM

>         It should also be noted that the words "Trojan" and "Etruscan", not
> to mention "Tuscan", "Tyrrhenian", and "Tursha" (an Egyptian term for "Sea
> Peoples", who were clearly from the Eastern Med), are quite possibly variant
> forms of a single word.  "Tarquin" and "Tarsus" might possibly be added to
> the list.  But we've been through this before.
>         Does anyone out there know where in the Aeneid Lemnos is mentioned?
> I have not been able to find it.
>
> Dr. David L. White

[Ed]
As far as I remember, it isn't, although it may be hidden under some mythical
place's name. Note that this is not necessary, if Aeneas belonged to another
group that sailed to other places.


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan 11 02:05:34 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 20:05:34 -0600
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.200534.0600.>

> Like the Germans who must have spoken PIE with a terrible
> brogue, the Etruscans seem to have done great phonetic violence to Greek
> words they imported.  Klytaimnestra = Clutmsta,  Herakles = Hercle,
> Menelaos = Menle, Polydeuces = Pulutuk, Diomedes = Zimite.

        Also "Aplu".  But are these names really Greek, in the sense of
having IE etymologies?  I have heard that of the Greek gods only Zeus is IE.
Perhaps we have (in some cases) not mangling but borrowing from a common
source.

Dr. David L. White


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 11 11:00:28 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 12:00:28 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.120028.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Stanley Friesen" <sarima at friesen.net>
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 3:37 AM

> At 08:18 PM 1/4/01 +0100, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:

>> ... different alphabet and the phonetic evolution during several centuries
>> of separation (the date of arrival of the Etruscan's forefathers is rather
>> unclear: the estimates vary from the 13th to the 6th c. B.C. But they seem
>> to have arrived after the Umbrians had already established themselves in the
>> later Etruria: the river now called Ombrone seems to bear their name).
>> Example: Etr.  <auils> - Lemn. <awidz> (probably meaning 'year(s)').

> Hmm, is there any other evidence for the Umbrians preceding the Etruscans
> in Etruria?  If this is really what happened it tends to remove the main
> objections to the Villanova Culture being associated with Italic speakers.

> [It also fits with my ideas about the origin of the italic peoples: if I am
> right than the earlier dates for the arrival of the Etruscans would also be
> ruled out, leaving circa 8th to 6th c. B.C.].

[Ed]
Note that I wrote "it SEEMS..". I am not aware of other arguments.

As a non-specialist, I am a bit surprised by your late date for the arrival of
the Umbrians (P-Italic).


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 11 11:31:23 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 12:31:23 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.123123.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <colkitto at sprint.ca>
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 4:59 PM

> Georgiev has a chapter on this topic in his An Introduction to the History of
> the Indo-European Languages. Sofia:  Bulgarian Academy of Sciences. (1981).
> My own knowledge of this topic is rather weak.  Any comments on Georgiev's
> proposals (which do look quite solid)?

[Ed]
I haven't read that. Actually I have abandoned the field (of Etruscan) years
ago for the ancient non-IE languages of the Iberian peninsula.


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 11 11:07:55 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 12:07:55 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.120755.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "proto-language" <proto-language at email.msn.com>
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 4:38 AM

[ moderator snip ]

> [PR]
> Could you tell me the source for the opinion that Roma is derived from
> Etruscan Ruma? And what is it supposed to mean?

> Pat

[Ed]

I read it in Heurgeon and maybe somewhere in Dum?zil. Actually they mention
<Rumach> meaning 'from Rome, Roman', cf. Anatolian <Sfardak>, 'from Sardes'.
Apparently the meaning is unknown, but that opinion is possibly dated.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Jan 11 20:43:55 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 15:43:55 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
In-Reply-To: <009401c078f2$839e9200$1fc407c6@oemcomputer>
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.154355.0500.>

[snip]
	Looking at Adolfo Zavaroni's etymologies of words of putative IE
origin in Etruscan, you could easily come to that conclusion. Etruscan
seems to have stressed the first syllable and given secondary stress to the
3rd syllable. It had /a, e, i, u/ in alphabet but I'd guess that
probably/possibly had a schwa. It also seems to have often aspirated and/or
fricativized stops /p/ > /ph, f/ > /h/; /k/ > /kh, x/ > /h/ --at least in
its later stages.
	I'd like to see some sort of chronology regarding
aspiration/friciativization or if it was just a case of better writing
conventions

>I have wondered about whether the Etruscans are somehow related to the
>proto-Germans.  Like the Germans who must have spoken PIE with a terrible
>brogue, the Etruscans seem to have done great phonetic violence to Greek
>words they imported.  Klytaimnestra = Clutmsta,  Herakles = Hercle,
>Menelaos = Menle, Polydeuces = Pulutuk, Diomedes = Zimite.  These names also
>make you wonder whether their script was somehow inadequately supplied with
>vowels, or made heavy use of abbreviated forms.

>Much of Etruscan inflection and derivation, in so far as we can figure it
>out at this remove, looks like a well-worn IE language of relatively recent
>date.  So do most of their pronouns and particles.  It's the Etruscan
>vocabulary that no one has yet been able to figure.

[ moderator snip ]

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


From dlwhite at texas.net  Wed Jan 10 23:04:55 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 17:04:55 -0600
Subject: Early Goths as Drinkers
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.170455.0600.>

> As I mentioned earlier, there is the Gothic verb <us-gutan> 'pour out' that
> is at the prime basis of seeing "Goth" as stemming from a flooded area or a
> different kind of pouring (in the works of such as the Swedish scholar
> Thorsten Andersson > "both Goetar, Proto-Germanic *gautoz, and Goths, Gutar,
> Proto-Germanic *gutaniz, are nomina agentis based on different ablaut grades
> of the verb Sw. gjuta, Germ. gie?en 'to pour', in the sense of 'to pour out
> semen'....")

        That is more or less what I was suggesting earlier.

> Because I have, perhaps for only personal reasons, problems with the Goths
> naming themselves either the "flood people" or the "semen people,"  I've
> tried to look again at the notion that the Gothic name is not a self-name and
> therefore perhaps not Germanic in origin

        It could be an "other-name" (if that is the opposite of "self-name")
from other Germans.  If "pour" had in some dialects come to mean 'drink'
(perhaps jocularly in the beginning, and/or end), then I suppose it's
conceivable that the name meant "drunks" or "drinkers", though I wouldn't
bet on it.

Dr. David L. White


From connolly at memphis.edu  Wed Jan 10 22:26:38 2001
From: connolly at memphis.edu (Leo A. Connolly)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 22:26:38 +0000
Subject: Meaning of ``Goth``
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.222638.0000.>

Herb Stahlke wrote:

> I  don't know Germanic linguistics well, but could /kans/ be
> something Notker would have written?

> Herb Stahlke

> <<< Georg at home.ivm.de  1/ 6  8:37p >>>

>> By the way (displaying my ignorance here), how does OHG "kans" appear as
>> modern German "gans"?  Did only the /d/ -> /t/ part of this shift get fully
>> established in standard German?

Stefan Georg replied:

> It's OHG, MHG, and NHG /gans/.

True enough.  But initial /g/ is often written <k> or <c> the Bavarian
and Alemannic dialects of OHG.  In fact, 19th century linguists seemed
to regard this as the "proper" development -- they called it
"strengalthochdeutsch".

In the systems of these dialects, Gmc. /k-/ had become affricate [kx-],
usually written <ch> or <kh>.  Gmc. /g/ was the only other velar stop,
and in initial position was surely voiceless all or most of the time
and, apparently, sometimes fortis [k], to judge from modern Swiss
dialects.  Notker would have written <kans> at the start of a sentence,
or if the preceding word ended with an obstruent, apparently indicating
the fortis [k].  He wrote <g> after vowels, nasals, and resonants.  This
is part of the famous Notker'sche Anlautsgesetz.  Initial [kx] is now
preserved only in certain Austrian dialects; most  Alemannic, Bavarian
and Austrian dialects have restored [kh], while Swiss dialects have [x].

Gmc. /t/ appears as <z> in OHG, /d/ as <t> in Alemannic, Bavarian, and
East Franconian (and in the modern standard language), and /T/ appears
as /d/, which Notker writes <t> after obstruents.

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From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan 11 03:28:41 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 21:28:41 -0600
Subject: High German /k/ for /g/
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.212841.0600.>

>> By the way (displaying my ignorance here), how does OHG "kans" appear as
>> modern German "gans"?  Did only the /d/ -> /t/ part of this shift get fully
>> established in standard German?

> It's OHG, MHG, and NHG /gans/.
> --

        Upon examination ... Old High German is a rather diverse group of
dialects, and in early Allemanic and Bavarian, initial "k" corresponding to
modern English and German /g/ is more or less regular, or at least
predominant.

Dr. David L. White


From sonno3 at hotmail.com  Thu Jan 11 01:26:24 2001
From: sonno3 at hotmail.com (Christopher Gwinn)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 20:26:24 -0500
Subject: IE 'wolf'
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.202624.0500.>

>         With regard to the 'wolf' thing a while back, where it was stated
> that Latin "lupus" is borrowed from a /p/-dialect of Italic, Germanic "wolf"
> and so on appear to be the expected Germanic cognates of Latin, "vulpes".
> If this is so, then unless I am missing something (a very real possibility),
> the /-p/ here is original, as Germanic /kw/ does not (to my knowledge)
> change into either /p/ before the shift or /f/ after it.

What are to make of Gaulish Louernios (*loup-ern-io), "fox," which may stem
from the same root as Indic lopasa, Avestan raopi ? These words are related
to Latin lupus in Pokorny.

-Chris Gwinn


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan 11 01:59:59 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 19:59:59 -0600
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.195959.0600.>

> My problem is that the cat words all look too much alike.

        That is probably because they are all fairly recent loan-words.  I
seem to recall that (apart from /miu/), there are only two cat-words in
general use in European languages, which might be called the /k-/ word and
the /p-/word (both of these exist in English).  However, though Welsh has
/cath/, Irish has (as I recall, I have no decent dictionary here) some
version of the /p-/ word, so we cannot even reconstruct a Common Celtic word
for 'cat'.   The fact(?) that Irish has a /p-/ word for 'cat' of course
means that the word cannot be old there.

Dr. David L. White


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Thu Jan 11 07:00:53 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 02:00:53 EST
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.020053.EST.>

In a message dated 1/10/2001 7:24:36 PM, rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:
<< Corominas says cattus "wildcat" was first documented in late Latin 4th c.
and springs from an unknown source [Corominas 1980] Buck (1949: 182) goes
back to Greek k?ttos, k?tta, g?ttos from an unknown source>>

The earlier term for cats in Greek was <ailouros> or <aielouro>.  Herodotus
describes them in Egypt in a way that seems to indicate that domestic cats
were not very familiar to his readers.  Aristophanes mentions cats as part of
a grabbag of wild game that is to be eaten.

<ailouros> might be some kind of a contraction, <Aiguptos?> + <ouros>,
guardian.  Or a compound, <haili-> <ouros>, ship watcher.  (A study in the
'70's showed that the spread of the currently dominant feral breed of
domestic cat, the blotched tabby, can be traced back to European sea port
towns.  Associating cats with ships might be the first impression -
especially since they served the purpose of protecting grain cargoes against
mice and rats.)  <ouros> is also a word in Greek refering to Egyptian desert
country and the Libyan desert wildcat is very closely related to the European
domestic cat.  <ouros> also brings up the Lynx and <lungourion>, a kind of
amber, the word derived by both Latins and Greeks "from lunx, ouron, and
supposed to be the coagulated urine of the lynx."  Finally there is <ailinos>
wailing, cry of anguish.  (Cf., Latin <feles>, cat; <fletus> weeping;
<flere>, to neigh as a horse does).

<feles>, the original Latin word for domestic cat, is often derived from
<felix>, referring either to the fecundity of cats or to the good effect they
have on preserving growing things and grains against rodents and birds.

Lidell-Scott give the first citation of <kattos> for cat as Aristophanes, but
this is ambiguous and may be too early.  <kottos> appears in Greek as
rooster, horse and two varieties of fish.  <chatos> may have been a rooster.
<gale:> refers in general to ferrets, martens, polecats and weasels.  The
lynx <lunx> is the main wildcat in the Greek world, drawing the chariot of
Bacchus and such.  In Latin, it is the ferret that gets the job of mouser by
name, <must?la> or <mustella>, indicating maybe that cats were not that
common early on.

One possibility, though slightly distasteful to a cat appreciator like
myself, is that the cat got its name from the use of its parts.

Gr <kassuo:>, Att. <kattuo:>, to sew, to stitch together like a shoemaker.
<kattus>, a piece of leather (or animal skin.)  <katateino:>, stretch, draw
tigth, especially a cord or strip of animal skin.  Perhaps this is somehow
the source of "catgut", for which I haven't seen a decent explanation.
(Attested is a Persian or Babylonian fur prepared from mouse skins,
<gaunacum> or <kaunak?>, so anything was possible.)

<<G & I also list Arabic kitt, Aramaic katta, Georgian katla, Laz k'at'u,
Kabardian gedu, Dido gedu, Avar keto, Turkish kedi...If it's from Gaulish;
could it be derived from catu- "fighter"? -I remenber seeing a similar
sounding word meaning "stealthy" or whatnot. >>

Genetically, many domestic cat shows very close ties to the North African
breed.  (O'Brien, S. J.: Molecular genetics in the domestic cat and its
relatives. Trends Genet. 2: 137-142, 1986. Masuda, R., Lopez, J. V., Pecon
Slattery, J., Yuhki, N., and O'Brien, S. J.: Molecular phylogeny of
mitochondrial cytochrome b and 12S rRNA sequences in the Felidae: Ocelot and
domestic cat lineages. Mol. Phylogenet. Evol. 6: 351-365, 1996.)

A Gaulish origin seems unlikely.  But all of the languages cited above could
have been influenced by the Hellenistic Greeks.

Regards,
Steve Long


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan 11 01:51:35 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 19:51:35 -0600
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro...
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.195135.0600.>

>> The were wild cats (Felis silvestris) in East European forests.

> And there still are in the Scottish Highlands

        Not that it matters ...
        The extinction of European wild cats anywhere in Europe is (I think)
fairly recent.  Except for having shorter tails, they are very close to
African Wild cats anyway.

Dr. David L. White


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 11 11:20:19 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 12:20:19 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro...
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.122019.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: <colkitto at sprint.ca>
Sent: Sunday, January 07, 2001 3:04 PM

[snip]
>> The were wild cats (Felis silvestris) in East European forests.

> And there still are in the Scottish Highlands

> Robert Orr

[Ed]
And in S. Belgium, but they are virtually extinct there.


From connolly at memphis.edu  Wed Jan 10 22:35:39 2001
From: connolly at memphis.edu (Leo A. Connolly)
Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 22:35:39 +0000
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <WED.10.JAN.2001.223539.0000.>

Diogo Almeida wrote:

>> From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
>> Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 14:41:17 -0500

>> [DGK]

>>> Does anyone know why <leche> is feminine?

>> There is a group of Latin neuters that became feminine in Spanish &
>> Portuguese and masculine in French and Italian.

> But "leite" (portuguese for "leche") is masculine ("o leite"), and I'm
> pretty sure that it is masculine both in Brazilian and European Portuguese.

The larger question is why we have _leche_ (as well as It. _latte_, Fr. _lait_
when there was no **_lactem_ so long as the word was neuter.  But if _lactem_
developed, then gender reassignment would be a must, and formally there would
have been no reason to choose masculine over feminine.  Why shouldn't a
product of the female breast become feminine?  If anything, it's the masculine
forms that need explaining.

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From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Jan 11 20:25:50 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 11 Jan 2001 15:25:50 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
In-Reply-To: <F151hs6hdn1KVHYS8YV000105ad@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.11.JAN.2001.152550.0500.>

	You're right. Please excuse that brain fart. The "odd-ball"
feminine forms exist in Spanish and include la leche, la flor, la sangre
and a few others --I seem to remember seeing a list of about a dozen or so.
	I thought it was Posner who linked the treatment of neuters in
Romance to singular and plural forms. Does anyone where that idea came
from? And more importantly, if it's really valid?
	Besides having nuanced gendered doublets such as "la mar, el mar",
"el charco, la charca", Spanish has a few regional differences in terms of
gender with such words as "el calor, la calor", "el sarte/n, la sarte/n",
"el di/namo, la dinamo" (I've only seen and heard the feminine variety
without an accent). How common is this phenomenon in other Romance
languages and other other languages with grammatical gender?

>>[DGK]

>>> Does anyone know why <leche> is feminine?

>> There is a group of Latin neuters that became feminine in Spanish &
>> Portuguese and masculine in French and Italian.

>But "leite" (portuguese for "leche") is masculine ("o leite"), and I'm
>pretty sure that it is masculine both in Brazilian and European Portuguese.

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


From r.piva at swissonline.ch  Fri Jan 12 19:45:59 2001
From: r.piva at swissonline.ch (Renato Piva)
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 20:45:59 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <FRI.12.JAN.2001.204559.0100.>

Diogo Almeida schrieb:

>> From: Rick Mc Callister <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
>> Date: Thu, 4 Jan 2001 14:41:17 -0500

>> [DGK]
>>> Does anyone know why <leche> is feminine?

>> There is a group of Latin neuters that became feminine in Spanish &
>> Portuguese and masculine in French and Italian.

The word for milk was feminine in my dialect (Venetian terraferma, province of
Vicenza, Italy) at least until two generations ago. My grandmother (born 1899)
used to say 'la late', but I say 'el late', and so says my mother/her daughter.
I don' t know what dialectal forms may be found in the Atlas of the Italian
dialects by Jaberg & Jud, as I have no access to the University library for the
moment. But I'm sure that the situation in Italy is (or once was) a bit more
complicated than it seems as compared with the simple statement  that 'latin
neutra became masculine in Italian'. I  too would tend to maintain, as has
already been pointed out in this discussion, that the gender was influenced by
the fact that it is always the female that gives milk. But in the special case
of  Venetian terraferma one should also take into consideration that there was
some influence from German for some time, which I think hasn't been studied
toroughly enough, yet. And in German, 'Milch' is of feminine gender.

Regards,
Renato Piva


From evenstar at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Jan 12 21:39:08 2001
From: evenstar at mail.utexas.edu (Shilpi Misty Bhadra)
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 15:39:08 -0600
Subject: Calcutta/Kolkatta
In-Reply-To: <3A57D2EE.CF89D0D0@pobox.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.12.JAN.2001.153908.0600.>

At 06:22 PM 1/6/01 -0800, you wrote:
>JohnYY wrote:
>> We are discussing the linguistics of a mythic locale - I believe
>> that Bombay is no more, having been replaced officially by something
>> like "Mumbai".

>In that case I'll settle for an old map!  ;)

>Anton Sherwood  --  br0nt0 at p0b0x.com  --  http://ogre.nu/

Calcutta is now Kolkatta in the latest Indian news. Mumbai has been around
for a long time, as Chennai for Madras. The early Brits had a hard time
with pronouncing Indian names, although they didn't to have much trouble
with Delhi (which hasn't changed). ;) My family is from Calcutta/Kolkatta.
My mother's maiden name was Basu, but changed to Bose, because it would be
easier for the Brits to pronounce. But she hasn't changed her maiden name
spelling ... yet! ;)

Shilpi Misty Bhadra
University of Texas at Austin
Ancient History, Classics, and Humanities (focus: Indo-European Studies)
senior undergraduate
evenstar at mail.utexas.edu
512-320-0229 (ph)
512-476-3367 (fax)


From stevegus at aye.net  Fri Jan 12 22:57:40 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 17:57:40 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <FRI.12.JAN.2001.175740.0500.>

Dr. David L. White wrote:

>> Like the Germans who must have spoken PIE with a terrible
>> brogue, the Etruscans seem to have done great phonetic violence to Greek
>> words they imported.  Klytaimnestra = Clutmsta,  Herakles = Hercle,
>> Menelaos = Menle, Polydeuces = Pulutuk, Diomedes = Zimite.

> Also "Aplu".  But are these names really Greek, in the sense of
> having IE etymologies?  I have heard that of the Greek gods only Zeus is IE.
> Perhaps we have (in some cases) not mangling but borrowing from a common
> source.

I don't have a classical dictionary handy right here, but yes, most of the
Greek names on the list have specifically Greek etymologies.  This is what I
remember:  Hera-kles is "fame [kle(w)os] of Hera."  Klytaimnestra also
contains the klut- root, here meaning "famous for," but I forget what.
"Polydeuces" means "very sweet," and exists as a separate word in Greek with
that meaning.  (poly + deukos < gleukos).  Dio-medes means "protected by
Zeus."  Mene-laos means "confronting the people."

I am not sure if anyone has fathomed an IE etymology for Apollo.  There are
a number of other deities whose etymology, IIRC, is unknown (Poseidon) or
whose Greek etymology is considered dubious or after-the-fact (Aphrodite).

There was, of course, a substantial Greek presence in Italy during the years
before the rise of Rome as a major power.  And, as noted, the Etruscans seem
to have some connections on Lemnos and perhaps Asia Minor.  While I can
imagine widely different cultures inheriting deity names (Tyr/Zeus &c.), it
is a bit hard for me to imagine that the Etruscans would have somehow
inherited the House of Atreus and Trojan War story cycles from a common
source they shared with the Greeks.

--
    We will walk into the snow, and we will keep walking, until
    we reach the grey horizon.

    Ceterum censeo sedem Romanam esse delendam.


From sonno3 at hotmail.com  Fri Jan 12 23:26:44 2001
From: sonno3 at hotmail.com (Christopher Gwinn)
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 18:26:44 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <FRI.12.JAN.2001.182644.0500.>

> Also "Aplu".  But are these names really Greek, in the sense of
> having IE etymologies?  I have heard that of the Greek gods only Zeus is IE.

I wouldn't go that far - surely we have a few more like:
Pan (Archaic Paon) from PIE *Pausonos "nourisher" (the equivalent of Vedic
Pusan)
Thygater Dios (epithet of dawn goddess) from PIE *dhugHter diuos "daughter
of the sky" (=Lithuanian Dievo Dukte, Indic Duhita Divah)
Erynys may represent PIE *sereniuHs "speedy/quick one?" (= Vedic Saranyu).

There are others which have PIE etymologies, but no assured direct
linguistic matches to gods from other IE groups:
Hera (*yer- "season/year")
Poseidon (*poti-da-on- "husband of Da (mater)")
Dionysos (*diwo-nus-os "nursling of Dyeus")
Hades (*sam-wid- "reuniter")

Ares, Hephaistos, Artemis and Apollo are usually taken as loans.  (Artemis and
Apollo perhaps are Anatolian)

-Chris Gwinn


From sarima at friesen.net  Sat Jan 13 01:45:38 2001
From: sarima at friesen.net (Stanley Friesen)
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 17:45:38 -0800
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
In-Reply-To: <00be01c07bc2$0d393a20$2606703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <FRI.12.JAN.2001.174538.0800.>

At 12:00 PM 1/11/01 +0100, Eduard Selleslagh wrote:
>> Hmm, is there any other evidence for the Umbrians preceding the Etruscans
>> in Etruria?  If this is really what happened it tends to remove the main
>> objections to the Villanova Culture being associated with Italic speakers.

>> [It also fits with my ideas about the origin of the italic peoples: if I am
>> right than the earlier dates for the arrival of the Etruscans would also be
>> ruled out, leaving circa 8th to 6th c. B.C.].

>[Ed]
>Note that I wrote "it SEEMS..". I am not aware of other arguments.

>As a non-specialist, I am a bit surprised by your late date for the arrival of
>the Umbrians (P-Italic).

I am tentatively using a model that derives the Italics as a whole from the
southern portion of the Urnfield Complex, perhaps in two or three
waves.  This seems to me the best bet for the arrival of a "western" IE
language in Italia.  Most of the earlier candidates have various problems,
to my way of thinking.

Thus the various Italic groups would arrive circa 9th century B.C. in my model.

This also fits with the general tendency of tribal groups to move into
prime territories during "dark ages" such as the one following the near
simultaneous fall of Mykenean Greece, the Hittite Empire, and the empires
of the fertile crescent - in the 11th c. B.C.

--------------
May the peace of God be with you.         sarima at ix.netcom.com


From stevegus at aye.net  Sat Jan 13 02:41:55 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 21:41:55 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <FRI.12.JAN.2001.214155.0500.>

Rick McCallister wrote:

> I'd like to see some sort of chronology regarding
> aspiration/friciativization or if it was just a case of better writing
> conventions

The example Diomedes > Zimite suggests that these changes were present in
pre-Roman times, though I don't have a date for the inscription in which
Zimite appears.  Since Etruscan seems to have had an unwritten schwa, or at
least syllabic nasals and liquids (spellings like Clutmsta leave little
option otherwise) it may be that "Zimite" represents something like /(d?)zi:
m. i te/, with something like syllabic /m./ as the second syllable,
preserving the four syllables of the borrowed Greek word.  Like in Coptic,
they may have written the syllabic liquids and nasals without a vowel.

According to Sihler's Comparative Grammar of Greek and Latin, assibilization
of T and D is attested by the 3d century A.D. in spellings like
"Marsianenses." for "Martianenses."

--
    We will walk into the snow, and we will keep walking, until
    we reach the grey horizon.

    Ceterum censeo sedem Romanam esse delendam.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sat Jan 13 19:09:05 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 14:09:05 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
In-Reply-To: <001701c07b73$07f005c0$e86663d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <SAT.13.JAN.2001.140905.0500.>

	A very good question
	Adolfo Zavaroni posits that Etruscan mangling of Greek names and
places is at least partially due to folk etymology
	In books on Greek myth, I've seen a wide gamut of possible origins
for names appearing in Greek myth.
	To give an example, Robert Graves linked almost every Greek deity
and mythic character to Greek. Off the top of my head, he, and many other
general writers linked Apollo to a word meaning "to destroy"; while Steven
Zimmer, in Markey & Greppin [1990: 311 ff] offers the following

	Pelasgian, non Greek IE of Greece and Balkans
Uranos "rainer" [Greek], see OI vars-
Kronos, probably Pelasgian corresponding to Greek g?ron; relationship to
khr?nos is folk etymology
Zeus "bright, daylight sky" see OL Dyaus, Latin dius
Hera pre-IE
Athene pre-IE
Aphrodite pre-IE
Hermes pre Greek
Apollo pre-IE Anatolian; see Lydian PLdans, Hittite Ap-pa-li-u-na-as^,
Luwian Apulunas
Artemis < ? "bear goddess"; see Lydian Artimus^, ArtimuL, Artimu-k
Dionysus < ? Thracian "Son of Zeus"
Poseidon < Poteid?won "Lord, Husband of the Earth" < ? Pelasgian
Ares < ar?: < pre-IE
Hephaistos pre-Greek, probably pre-IE
Demeter "Earth Mother" < ? Messapic, see Messapic damatura [321-22]

	I suspect that Graves's etymologies are amateurish but I plead the
5th, on the grounds that any testimony I may give may reveal my ignorance :>
	But I'd like to hear from those in the know


>> Like the Germans who must have spoken PIE with a terrible
>> brogue, the Etruscans seem to have done great phonetic violence to Greek
>> words they imported.  Klytaimnestra = Clutmsta,  Herakles = Hercle,
>> Menelaos = Menle, Polydeuces = Pulutuk, Diomedes = Zimite.

>        Also "Aplu".  But are these names really Greek, in the sense of
>having IE etymologies?  I have heard that of the Greek gods only Zeus is IE.
>Perhaps we have (in some cases) not mangling but borrowing from a common
>source.
>
>Dr. David L. White

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


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Sun Jan 14 03:21:09 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 03:21:09 -0000
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <SUN.14.JAN.2001.032109.0000.>

>> [ Moderator's note:
>>   The hypothesis that the Etruscans may have originated in Anatolia appears
>>   to be supported by the presence on the island of Lemnos of a stele
>>   inscribed in a language clearly related to but differing from the Etruscan
>>   of Italy.
>>   --rma ]

>[Ed Selleslagh]

>I thought this was something of majority view. Of course, final proof is hard
>to get by, and one should keep an open mind. I'll give you some arguments, but
>I don't intend to start a new thread on this.

>The moderator's note is indeed the main argument. The stele found near Kaminia
>on Lemnos (by G. Cousin and F. D|rrbach in 1885) dates from the 6th or 7th c.
>B.C. The spelling differences (with Etruscan) can probably be explained by the
>different alphabet and the phonetic evolution during several centuries of
>separation (the date of arrival of the Etruscan's forefathers is rather
>unclear: the estimates vary from the 13th to the 6th c. B.C. But they seem to
>have arrived after the Umbrians had already established themselves in the
>later Etruria: the river now called Ombrone seems to bear their name).
>Example:  Etr.  <auils> - Lemn. <awidz> (probably meaning 'year(s)').

Examination of the Lemnian stele does not favor the hypothesis of Etruscan
emigration from Anatolia. The alphabet of the stele and similar minor
inscriptions found on Lemnos belongs to the Euboico-Chalcidian family, not
directly related to the Phrygian alphabet used in NW Anatolia and Gordium,
and out of place among the East Ionian and Cycladic alphabets typical of the
Aegean. Features include the Lemnian use of the zigzag sign as a sibilant
(not a vowel as in Phrygian), the fricative value of H (vocalic in East
Ionian), the psi-shaped chi (X-shaped in Cycladic and EI), and the existence
of vau (digamma, already extinct in EI). The Lemnian alphabet is clearly an
intrusion from the West. Indeed it is difficult to derive this alphabet
directly from Euboea without going through the Chalcidian models of Greek
communities in Italy. For details see Carlo de Simone, "I Tirreni a Lemnos:
l'alfabeto" in Studi Etruschi LX, 1994, pp. 145-63.

The stele contains the phrase <holaies' naphoth> which is plausibly
'grandson of Holaie'; Lemn. Holaie = Hylaeus (A. Trombetti, "La lingua
etrusca", Firenze 1928, pp. 188-92). <Naphoth> corresponds to Etr. <nefts>,
<nef(i)s'> which is a loanword from Umbrian (A.J. Pfiffig, "Die etruskische
Sprache", Graz 1969, p. 297). The stele also contains <aker tavars'io
vanalasial>, evidently the name of the honored/deceased in regular Etruscan
form: Aker = praenomen, Tavars'io = gentilicium, Vanalasial = metronymic. To
my knowledge *Acer is unattested as a praenomen in Etruria, but its former
existence is indicated by the gentilicia Acri (TLE 618; CIE 3987,4257),
Acrie (CIE 5039), and Acrni (TLE 442). For parallel derivation see the
gentilicia Veli (CIE 3421,3933,4322 etc.), Velie (TLE 7; CIE 752,2702), and
Velni (CIE 4335,4682/3), all formed from the common praenomen Vel.

This PN-GN-MN naming system originated in central Italy with the Etruscans
and Italics before 700 BCE, though it took some 200 years to become
established in Campania (M. Cristofani et al., "Il sistema onomastico" in
AA. VV. "L'Etrusco arcaico", Firenze 1976, pp. 92-134). Aker's metronymic is
based on the feminine gentilicium *Vanalasi. The feminine name-suffix <-i>
was borrowed into Etruscan from Italic (de Simone op.cit. note 78). These
points strongly suggest that the Etruscan community which left the stele and
other inscriptions on Lemnos emigrated from Italy, probably around 650 BCE.
The emigration must be dated after the development of the Italo-Etruscan
gentilician naming system, but before the establishment of standard writing
systems throughout the Etruscan-speaking parts of Italy.

Other features of the inscription indicate that "Lemnian" should be regarded
as a dialect of Archaic Etruscan, not a separate language, and hence not
sufficiently remote from mainland Etruscan to serve for reconstruction of
"Uretruskisch" or "Proto-Tyrrhenian". The Lemnian phrase <sialchveis' avis'>
corresponds to Recent Etr. <s'ealchls avils> 'of sixty years (of age)' (or
40 if you follow Torp's numeral scheme; cf. TLE 98). Note that Etr. <avils>
is a genitive sg./pl. 'of year(s)'. The Lemnian dative phrase <holaies'i
phokiasiale> 'to Hylaeus the Phocaean' corresponds in form to Recent Etr.
<larthiale hulchniesi> (TLE 84) and several Arch. Etr. dedicatory
inscriptions. The mention of a Phocaean Greek, of course, says nothing about
the provenance of these or any other Etruscan-speakers.

As for your Ombrone (anc. Umbro), there are two rivers by that name as well
as a Calabrian stream formerly called Oumbros. The stem Umbr- has no
plausible Umbrian or other IE etymology. It was probably applied to certain
rivers by non-Etruscan pre-IE substrate-speakers, then to dwellers in or
across a particular river-valley (G. Alessio, "Mediterranei ed Italici
nell'Italia centrale" in St. Etr. XXIX, 1961, pp. 191-217). The Umbrians
themselves used <naharkum numem> (Lat. *Narcum nomen) to denote the nation
of dwellers in the valley of the Nar (mod. Nera), probably Sabines. There
are good reasons to believe that Umbrians antedated Etruscans in this corner
of the world, but the hydronym Ombrone is not one of them.

>The general aspect of the language is flecting, with elements that recall
>(P)IE (e.g. -c, Lat. -que, Greek -te, but that could be contamination), but
>more similar to e.g. Lydian (-l, -s genitives), apparently with a strong
>initial accent and pileups of consonants. In short: like a cousin rather than
>a descendant of ('narrow') PIE.

Etruscan nominal morphology is agglutinative and allows redetermination: an
oblique case may be substantivized and may serve as the base for further
inflection. E.g.:

  tus'  n. 'niche'
  tus't(h)i  loc. 'in the niche' TLE 630,631,655
  tus'ur  pl. 'niches'
  tus'urthi  loc. 'in the niches' TLE 586,627
  tus'urthir  pl. 'those (dead spouses) in the niches' TLE 587

  papa  n. 'grandfather'
  papals  abl. 'from the grandfather' = 'grandchild' TLE 437
  papalser  pl. 'grandchildren (of male)' TLE 169; Tab. Cort.

  Calu  n. 'god of Death'
  Calus  gen. 'belonging to Calu' cf. TLE 642
  Calusur  pl. 'those belonging to Calu' = 'the dead'
  Calusurasi  dat. 'to those etc.' = 'to the dead' TLE 172

Can your favorite IE language do that?

>A few years ago, M. Carrasquer made a tentative family tree I will send you
>privately since this list doesn't allow it.

Thank you. I don't dispute the outline of this tree (other than the position
of Gmc. which is not presently under discussion). What is needed for serious
assessment of Proto-Indo-Tyrrhenian is a table of sound-changes between PT
and PIE or PIH (other than the work of certifiable kooks, who are attracted
to Etruscan like fruit flies to a banana display). This in turn requires a
deeper knowledge of native Etruscan vocabulary. Attempting to reconstruct
PIT with current data would be premature at best.

If we take the date of 1200 BCE for the presumed Etruscan emigration, and
regard the Etruscans of Lemnos as a relict population, we are confronted by
the absence of corroboration in the classical authors. Homer does not
mention Etruscans (Turse:noi, "Tyrrhenians") on Lemnos; his inhabitants of
Lemnos are Sinties (Il. I.593-4; Od. VIII.294). These were Thracians
according to Strabo (Geog. VII fr. 45; XII.3.20). Early references to
Tyrrhenians (Hesiod, Theog. 1016; "Homeric" Hymn to Dionysus HH 7.8) do not
involve Lemnos. Later tradition has the Minyae, descended from the
Argonauts, expelled from Lemnos by Pelasgians (Hdt. IV.145; Paus. VII.2.2).
The island was eventually taken over by the Athenians (Hdt. VI.139-40).
Thucydides, in listing bilingual barbarians living near Athos some years
afterward (IV.109.4), mentions Tyrrhenians formerly inhabiting Lemnos and
Athens. It is hardly likely that a substantial population of Etruscans lived
on Lemnos for several centuries. More probable is a small colony of
Etruscans (retired pirates?) between ca. 650-450 BCE, with the majority of
the island's inhabitants being Pelasgians at that time.

The source of the Anatolian-Etruscan hypothesis is of course the story
related by Herodotus (I.94). The Lydians claimed to have colonized Etruria
during a long famine, having sent half the population away under the king's
son Tyrsenus, whose name was then taken by the colonists. The whole story is
presented in indirect discourse depending on <phasi de autoi Ludoi> 'and the
Lydians themselves say...' indicating that Herodotus does not attach factual
weight to it. As the historian admits elsewhere (VII.152) <ego: de opheilo:
legein ta legomena, peithesthai ge men ou pantapasi opheilo:> 'I am obliged
to tell the stories, but I am not obliged to believe them unconditionally'.

Among later authors Velleius Paterculus took this story at face-value, but
Dionysius Halicarnassius, who spent years actually studying the Etruscans in
Etruria, rejected it. VP has had no shortage of successors, even now, who
blithely ride the Anatolian-Etruscan bandwagon.

>There are also non-linguistic arguments, like the bronze liver of Piacenza,
>used as a model by Etruscan fortune tellers, which has N. Mesopotamian
>characteristics. Or the considerable Greek content of Etruscan culture.

The bronze liver is rather late as Etruscan artefacts go. Greeks had a
considerable presence in Italy from early times; the Greek inscription of
Gabii is dated to ca. 770 BCE; we can infer that most if not all of the
Greek content was transferred to Etruscan culture on Italian soil.

A powerful "argumentum ex silentio" against Etruscans coming from Anatolia
in the late II-early I mill. BCE is the absence of Mesopotamian deities and
motifs in early (un-Hellenized) Etruscan religion.

>Although this isn't really an argument, I would like to add this:

[snip of material on Aeneid]

>All this means is that probably some people from the north-eastern
>Mediterranean arrived in Latium or thereabout in or before the earliest
>days of
>the Roman tradition.

I don't dispute the last point. A lot of things happened in the aftermath of
the Trojan War. I just don't find it plausible that Etruscan emigration from
Anatolia was one of them.

DGK


From miskec4096 at hotmail.com  Sun Jan 14 21:42:50 2001
From: miskec4096 at hotmail.com (Kreso Megyeral)
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 22:42:50 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <SUN.14.JAN.2001.224250.0100.>

Steve Gustafson wrote:

>I have wondered about whether the Etruscans are somehow related to the
>proto-Germans.  Like the Germans who must have spoken PIE with a terrible
>brogue, the Etruscans seem to have done great phonetic violence to Greek
>words they imported.  Klytaimnestra = Clutmsta,  Herakles = Hercle,
>Menelaos = Menle, Polydeuces = Pulutuk, Diomedes = Zimite.  These names also
>make you wonder whether their script was somehow inadequately supplied with
>vowels, or made heavy use of abbreviated forms.

The same thing occurs in Albanian in borrowings from Latin (imperator -
mbret, parentem - prind, fossatus - fshat), so I suppose it has nothing to
do with the script.


From petegray at btinternet.com  Fri Jan 12 20:05:06 2001
From: petegray at btinternet.com (petegray)
Date: Fri, 12 Jan 2001 20:05:06 -0000
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <FRI.12.JAN.2001.200506.0000.>

>       Does anyone out there know where in the Aeneid Lemnos is mentioned?

The only reference in the Aeneid to Lemnos is 8:454, Lemnios pater (of
Vulcan).   It is a reference to Iliad 1:592, and perhaps Od 8:284.   Lemnios
became the dearest place on earth to Hephaestus (Vulcan).

Peter


From edsel at glo.be  Sun Jan 14 19:01:42 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 20:01:42 +0100
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <SUN.14.JAN.2001.200142.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G. Wilson" <douglas at nb.net>
Sent: Wednesday, January 10, 2001 11:42 PM

>> Does anyone out there know where in the Aeneid Lemnos is mentioned?
>> I have not been able to find it.

> A tangential reference, I think, Aeneid 8.454:

> "Haec pater Aeoliis properat dum Lemnius oris, ..."

> -- Doug Wilson

[Ed Selleslagh]

I'm sorry I had overlooked that. However, this (Pater Lemnius) is simply a
reference to Hephaistos/Vulcanus, who was thrown on the island by one of his
parents.

Nonetheless, the subsequent verses - which I looked up again after your remark
- are relevant for Vergilius' idea (and confusion) about the origin of the
Etruscans and Italic people:

Book 8.478: Haud procul hinc saxo incolitur fundata vetusto urbis Agyllinae
sedes, ubi Lydia quondam gens, bello praeclara, iugis insedit Etruscis. ["hinc"
(from here) means 'from Rome'. J. Dryden identifies Agylla with the Etruscan
city of Caere. His translation of "iugis Etruscis" as "from the Tuscans('
yoke)" is inacceptable: it contradicts the whole context. If it were true, in
Vergilius' words, the Lydian immigrants would have chased the Etruscans from
the place. That would possibly mean that the Tuscans are confounded with the
Umbrians, an interesting possibility]

Book 8.499: O Maeoniae delecta iuventus, flos veterum virtusque virum, quos
iustus in hostem fert doloret merita accendit Mezentius ira, nulli fas Italo
tantam subiungere gentem: externos optate duces.[Maeonia is a region in Lydia].

So he clearly thinks the Etruscans are of Lydian origin (quite common in his
days) and are distinct from the Italic people. Of course he has to posit that
Aeneas is somehow Italic, otherwise his nationalistic epic wouldn't make sense.
On the other hand, he has him come from Troy, a city with a complex history of
successive cultures, most probably (in my view) first Anatolian - maybe Hittite
or some other/older culture from Anatolia - then Achaean/Greek. Its double name
Troy/Ilion could well be a sign of its mixed ethnic/linguistic history: the
root IL/R(I), UR(I) is found all over the Eastern Mediterranean (Mesopotamia,
Hebrew, some Greek toponyms like Hyria...), and in Basque (iri = city,
formerly ili); Iliki (now Alcudia, from 'the hill' in Arabic: it is a tell) was
an outpost of an Iberian settlement (now Elche in the Spanish province of
Alicante). Troy isn't all that far from Lemnos, on the route to S. Greece and
the rest of the Mediterranean.

So, all this is compatible with the idea that the Etruscans were of
geographically Anatolian origin, and possibly related to peoples speaking a
language somehow related to the Anatolian branch of "wide" PIE, and that some
of them were (still) in Kaminia on Lemnos in the 6th or 7th c. B.C. If the
relation to the Trojan war contains any truth at all, the forefathers of the
Etruscans would probably have left the region in the 12th c. B.C., which
corresponds to the earliest estimate of their arrival in Etruria. But who would
bet on that?

These are just some ideas, not intended to convince anyone who has good reasons
to think otherwise.

Ed.


From dalazal at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 16 01:15:16 2001
From: dalazal at hotmail.com (Diogo Almeida)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 20:15:16 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.201516.0500.>

>From: "Leo A. Connolly" <connolly at memphis.edu>
>Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 22:35:39 +0000

[ moderator snip ]

>The larger question is why we have _leche_ (as well as It. _latte_, Fr.
>_lait_ when there was no **_lactem_ so long as the word was neuter.  But if
>_lactem_ developed, then gender reassignment would be a must, and formally
>there would have been no reason to choose masculine over feminine.  Why
>shouldn't a product of the female breast become feminine?  If anything, it's
>the masculine forms that need explaining.

I'm no specialist and I don't know what was the vulgar latin or the early
romance word for milk on the Peninsula at that time, but my latin dictionary
gives "lacte, is" for milk (and "lac" as an archaic form). I think that
"lactem" then, would have been the accusative form (I have to rely on my
memory, though, since I don't have any Latin grammar with me :) ).
Portuguese, as a general rule, got the accusative form of latin words. So
"lactem" being the accusative, it seems likely that the word in Portuguese
developed from that form (I don't have an etymological dictionary with me,
though). And since neuter was absorbed by the masculine gender in general
(at least in Portuguese, I don't know about Spanish), i don't see any
problems with "leite" being masculine. On the other hand, "leche" as
feminine is strange to me, especially because Portuguese and Spanish
normally agree when it comes to the gender of the words.

>"formally there would have been no reason to choose masculine over feminine.
>Why shouldn't a product of the female breast become feminine?  If anything,
>it's the masculine forms that need explaining."

If the gender systems of Portuguese and Spanish were mainly semantically
driven, maybe. But they aren't. There is a strong formal element in gender
assingment in these languages. And as I said before, I think that neuter
words become masculine in Portuguese most of the time (and I guess this is
also true for Spanish).

Best wishes,
Diogo


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sat Jan 13 20:27:43 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 15:27:43 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro...
In-Reply-To: <000901c07b71$1adebde0$e86663d1@texas.net>
Message-ID: <SAT.13.JAN.2001.152743.0500.>

	Do domestic cats only descend from North African cats? Or did they
also interbreed with various species of small local wildcats?

>>> The were wild cats (Felis silvestris) in East European forests.

>> And there still are in the Scottish Highlands

>        Not that it matters ...
>        The extinction of European wild cats anywhere in Europe is (I think)
>fairly recent.  Except for having shorter tails, they are very close to
>African Wild cats anyway.

>Dr. David L. White

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


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Mon Jan 15 11:19:17 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 11:19:17 -0000
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.111917.0000.>

On 4 Jan 2001, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

>[DGK]
>> Alessio rejects the connection between the Sardo-Corsican dog-terms and
>> Basque <zakur>, <txakur> on phonetic grounds. He suggests <zakur> might be
>> derived from a Ligurian form represented by Late Lat. <segusius>, Ital.
>> <segugio> 'bloodhound'.

>[RMCC]
>	Corominas is locked up in the library for the next week or so, so I
>hope you don't mind me asking how and if Spanish sabueso "bloodhound" is
>derived from segusius. It looks possible but messy: I can see sabueso from
>something like *sagu"eso < *sagOso- but it gives an open /O/, rather than
>closed /o/ that would be expected from /u/
>	Or is it directly from substrate?

I would guess directly from substrate. Otherwise the /a/ of the first
syllable is also hard to derive from Latin /e/. The first "u" of segusius is
presumed long on the basis of "grecizzato" egousia, which I neglected to
mention in my posting. 3 of the 4 possible variations of /a:e/
correspondence are found in presumed substratal words:

  Lat. cerrus, It. cerro, Sp. carrasco 'holm-oak'
  Lat. larix, It. larice, Sp. alerce 'larch'
  Lat. betula, It. betulla, Sp. abedul 'birch'
  It. cheppia, Sp. sa'balo, saboga, saboca 'shad'

These are practically the only examples I have, so I don't know whether the
vowel-alternation and prosthetic /a/ are strictly determined by phonetic
environment.

>> Ligurians living near Tartessos are reported by Steph. Byz. (s.v.
>> Ligustine), and Thuc. (VI.2.2) says the Sicanians claimed to be Iberians
>> driven from the basin of the Sikanos (mod. Jucar?) by Ligurians. Alessio
>> thus hypothesizes that the Ligurians brought substratal forms from the
>> Balkans to southern Spain, whence the Iberians passed some of them (perhaps
>> including <zakur>) on to the Basques, giving Hubschmid and others the false
>> impression that Basque itself originated in the East.

>	So Alessio proposed the Lusitanians = "IE Ligurians" = Illyrians
>hypothesis? By "IE Ligurians", I mean the non-Celtic, non-Italic IE
>speakers of N Italy & S France
>	I've also seen claims that the Sikani themselves were Ligurians
>based on toponymic similarities between names in Sicily and Liguria

Actually, I have not seen Alessio mention Lusitanians in his papers which I
have read so far, and his Ligurians (or Balkano-Ligurians) are
non-IE-speakers responsible for substratal material like the examples above.
In one of his papers Alessio quotes Festus (414 L.) "Reate orti [Sacrani]
qui a Septimontio Ligures Siculosque exegerunt" and argues that this shows
the identity of Ligures and Siculi. I don't see this; Festus seems to be
referring to two distinct nations. Likewise Alessio reads the identity of
Ligues and Sikanoi into Thucydides (VI.2.2), who actually states the Sikanoi
claimed to have been driven away from the Sikanos by the Ligues.

In my own humble view, the Siculi probably represent the first wave of
IE-speakers into Italy, responsible for forms in which PIE medial *dh has
become /t/ (Aitne/Aetna, Rutuli, Liternum/Leuternon, and probably the source
of Etr. lautni 'freedman'). Thucydides (VI.2.4) says there were still some
Siculi in Italy in his time. The Sicani claimed to be Iberians, but if this
term is understood geographically, they might be identifiable with the
non-Celtic, non-Italic IE-speakers of Liguria, and their later migration to
Sicily might explain the similarity of toponyms. Provisionally I prefer to
retain "Ligurian" for one of the well-defined pre-IE substrates in Italy,
the other being "Pelasgian" (citrus, menta, rosa <- *wrodia, vaccinium,
viola, etc.). Etruscan is non-IE but not pre-IE and does not qualify as a
substrate. Not that any of this is likely to clear the air...

DGK


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Sat Jan 13 07:16:53 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 02:16:53 EST
Subject: Early Goths as Drinkers
Message-ID: <SAT.13.JAN.2001.021653.EST.>

In a message dated 1/12/2001 7:16:16 PM, dlwhite at texas.net writes:
<< It could be an "other-name" (if that is the opposite of "self-name") from
other Germans.>>

That's a possibility, but it could have been a name given by Celts or
Sarmatians or Finns, too.  The idea of looking to Greek is simply based on
the fact that the name first appears in Greek, and there's a fair lists of
tribal names in Greek that seem to or clearly do mean something in Greek, or
at least have a folk or conjectured etymology in Greek.  Add to the heavy
influence that Greek had on the first writing in Gothic (including its
script), and it seems reasonable at least to take a look.

<<If "pour" had in some dialects come to mean 'drink' (perhaps jocularly in
the beginning, and/or end), then I suppose it's conceivable that the name
meant "drunks" or "drinkers", though I wouldn't bet on it. >>

Well, it's a bit more subtle than that.  There were strong religious and
cultural implications in alcohol among certain groups in that place and time,
and one might see them transposed into Christian rituals, for example.  The
notion of pouring libations over the dead was an old one among the Greeks,
mentioned in Homer.  Other rituals at meals and certain times of the year
also involved offering a pour (maybe a <kas/katils>, Gothic, vessels for
liquids) to the dead or to spirits.  A book which I have not seen came out
recently about evidence of feasting in connection with Cernjachov ("Gothic")
burials, perhaps something like an Irish wake.

The notion suggested by some scholars that the Goths were a religious
grouping as much as an ethnic one might suggest that the name might refers to
specific, characteristic rituals (as, e.g., "Baptist").  Some connection may
be made to the practice of pouring libations to the dead or other such
rituals reflected in Greek words like <choe:>, <chutos>, <chutlon> and
<choe:phoros> (offering "choai" to the dead, as in the tragedy Choe:phoroi,
where the Chorus pours choai to the shade of Agamemnon.)  Because our direct
knowledge of Gothic is after Christianization in primarily Christian texts,
perhaps we only see the remnants of these practices in Gothic words like
<us-gutnan>, <gudja>, <guda> and even perhaps a satemized <sa:uths>,
sacrifice, burnt-offering.

But in all there isn't much sense in betting on any of these interpretations,
including the ones about floods and semen, because one appears to be as
likely or unlikely as the other.  Which is to some degree the point I'm
making.

Regards,
Steve Long


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sat Jan 13 20:25:20 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 15:25:20 -0500
Subject: cat < ?
In-Reply-To: <92.ed95e36.278eb425@aol.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.13.JAN.2001.152520.0500.>

Thanx for the impressive inventory of feline knowledge

Buck [1949: 181] suggests that
Greek aie/louros, ai/louros "cat, marten, ferret, weasel, etc." may be from
aio/los "quick" + oura/: "tail"

In my notes, Buck offers no etymology for Latin fe:le:s "cat, marten,
ferret", although Buck says to see Welsh beleu "marten"

Someone, maybe Partridge 1958, links feles to Latin meles "badger"

I suppose Hindi bhili "cat" would be too fortuitous to suggest a connection
based on *bhil-, *bhel-?

[snip]

>The earlier term for cats in Greek was <ailouros> or <aielouro>.  Herodotus
>describes them in Egypt in a way that seems to indicate that domestic cats
>were not very familiar to his readers.  Aristophanes mentions cats as part of
>a grabbag of wild game that is to be eaten.

	Yum!

><ailouros> might be some kind of a contraction, <Aiguptos?> + <ouros>,
>guardian.  Or a compound, <haili-> <ouros>, ship watcher.  (A study in the
>'70's showed that the spread of the currently dominant feral breed of
>domestic cat, the blotched tabby, can be traced back to European sea port
>towns.  Associating cats with ships might be the first impression -
>especially since they served the purpose of protecting grain cargoes against
>mice and rats.)  <ouros> is also a word in Greek refering to Egyptian desert
>country and the Libyan desert wildcat is very closely related to the European
>domestic cat.

	So is there a Greek Dick Whittington tale?

><ouros> also brings up the Lynx and <lungourion>, a kind of
>amber, the word derived by both Latins and Greeks "from lunx, ouron, and
>supposed to be the coagulated urine of the lynx."  Finally there is <ailinos>
>wailing, cry of anguish.  (Cf., Latin <feles>, cat; <fletus> weeping;
><flere>, to neigh as a horse does).
>
><feles>, the original Latin word for domestic cat, is often derived from
><felix>, referring either to the fecundity of cats or to the good effect they
>have on preserving growing things and grains against rodents and birds.

	From what I gather, feles was originally applied to a ferret,
mongoose or other type of weasel. I like your ailouros etymology a lot more
>
>Lidell-Scott give the first citation of <kattos> for cat as Aristophanes, but
>this is ambiguous and may be too early.  <kottos> appears in Greek as
>rooster, horse and two varieties of fish.  <chatos> may have been a rooster.
><gale:> refers in general to ferrets, martens, polecats and weasels.  The
>lynx <lunx> is the main wildcat in the Greek world, drawing the chariot of
>Bacchus and such.  In Latin, it is the ferret that gets the job of mouser by
>name, <must?la> or <mustella>, indicating maybe that cats were not that
>common early on.

	Are there any known IE roots for these words?
>
>One possibility, though slightly distasteful to a cat appreciator like
>myself, is that the cat got its name from the use of its parts.
>
>Gr <kassuo:>, Att. <kattuo:>, to sew, to stitch together like a shoemaker.
><kattus>, a piece of leather (or animal skin.)  <katateino:>, stretch, draw
>tigth, especially a cord or strip of animal skin.  Perhaps this is somehow
>the source of "catgut", for which I haven't seen a decent explanation.
>(Attested is a Persian or Babylonian fur prepared from mouse skins,
><gaunacum> or <kaunak?>, so anything was possible.)

	My intuition is that cats would have been too valuable but in a
society that feasted on lark's tongues, anything's possible

[snip]

>Genetically, many domestic cat shows very close ties to the North African
>breed.

[snip]

So, if we could only find a Berber word of sufficient antiquity linked both
semantically and phonologically. But I suppose if one existed, it would
already be cited in OED

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


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Sat Jan 13 20:46:48 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Sat, 13 Jan 2001 15:46:48 -0500
Subject: dulcis/lac?
In-Reply-To: <LPBBJKMNINKHACNDIIGMMECGDHAA.a.rosta@newmail.net>
Message-ID: <SAT.13.JAN.2001.154648.0500.>

	I remember seeing something like that bruited about and rejected
for whatever reason --too long? too complex?
	It may have been in a post by Alexis Manaster Ramer, I'm not sure
	If [something like] *dlak- were indeed possible
I'm wondering
	1. If there were a possibility of a semantic link to Buck's
proposed *dluk- [if it is indeed valid] based on "sweet, sweetness, sweet
liquid"
	2. If this works, then if milk might not spring a type of calque
based on *mel- "honey" > *mlak-, *melgh-, etc. meaning something like
"sweet, sweet liquid, honeyed, honey liquid"
	I believe there are proposed Nostratic roots for "milk" & "honey"
based on [off the top of my head] something like *ml-, *mlk-/mlgh-; so such
a connection would not necessarily upset the Nostratic apple cart --but
that's something we can discuss on FM :>


>> 	I noticed that Buck [among others] suggests
>> Latin dulcis & Greek gluku/s < *dluk-
>> 	I'm wondering if there's any possibility of
>> Latin lac, lact- & Greek gala, galakt- < *dlak-
>> 	I've also seen Latin loquor linked to [something like] Gaelic tlu-,
>> and English talk

>OTOH, *gmlkt has the advantage of, with suitable snippage,
>giving also the Germanic form...

>--And.

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


From dlwhite at texas.net  Sun Jan 14 14:58:01 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Sun, 14 Jan 2001 08:58:01 -0600
Subject: IE 'wolf'
Message-ID: <SUN.14.JAN.2001.085801.0600.>

> What are to make of Gaulish Louernios (*loup-ern-io), "fox," which may stem
> from the same root as Indic lopasa, Avestan raopi ? These words are related
> to Latin lupus in Pokorny.

> -Chris Gwinn

        I supose that the 'wolf' and 'fox' words are ultimately splits from
a single word, and that both were subject to tabu deformation.
        Re-stating, hopefully more clearly, what I originally said, it
appears that we have 1) a variation between /lu/ and /wl/, and 2) a
variation between /k(w)/ and /p/.   All four possibilities are found meaning
'wolf' in some IE language.    I hope this attempt at a table makes it.  It
probably won't ...

                                          /lu/        /wl/
                            /k(w)/   luka       vlka
                                /p/    lupo      wolf

        These variations do not, as far as I know, seem to be due to
sound-change or borrowing, as they are not generally characteristic of the
various branches in question.  The first part, /lu/ or /wl/, may well be
relatable by sound-symbolism to various words for 'howl' (which itself is,
or was, an example), or 'be destroyed' (Greek 'olumi'), or the sound made by
modern Middle Eastern women at funerals and what not.

Dr. David L. White


From alderson at xkl.com  Thu Jan 18 19:03:42 2001
From: alderson at xkl.com (Rich Alderson)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 14:03:42 -0500
Subject: [juhani.klemola@helsinki.fi: Call for Papers]
Message-ID: <THU.18.JAN.2001.140342.0500.>

I am forwarding the following announcement with the permission of Dr. Klemola.
Requests for further information should be sent to the conference addresses
below.

------- Start of forwarded message -------
Message-ID:  <3A64630B.6891.134BE56 at localhost>
Date:         Tue, 16 Jan 2001 10:22:17 EST
Reply-To: juhani.klemola at helsinki.fi
From: Juhani Klemola <juhani.klemola at helsinki.fi>
Subject:      Call for Papers
To: HISTLING at VM.SC.EDU

----------------------------Original message----------------------------
                               Call for Papers

       International Colloquium on Early Contacts between English and
                             the Celtic Languages
          University of Joensuu Research Station, Mekrijarvi, Finland
                              24-26 August, 2001

Scholars interested in historical and linguistic contacts between
English and the Celtic languages are invited to offer contributions to
 the "International Colloquium on Early Contacts between English
and the Celtic Languages", which will be held from August 24 to
26, 2001, at the University of Joensuu Research Station in
Mekrijarvi, North Karelia, Finland.

The aim of the Colloquium is to bring together distinguished
scholars =96 historians, Celticists, Anglicists, and general linguists =96
 to discuss the nature and extent of the historical and linguistic
contacts between speakers of Celtic languages and speakers of
Germanic languages and their impact on the development of the
English language. Despite the recent rise of interest in the
possibility of Celtic substratum influences in English, there have so
 far been few opportunities for scholars working on different aspects
 of this question to come together and exchange their findings. It is
 the purpose of this Colloquium to provide a forum for such
discussion. A selection of the papers will be published.

The contributions are expected to address questions relating to the
 following broad topics:

(i) the historical background to the early (i.e. medieval and  early
    modern) contacts between speakers of Celtic and  Germanic
    languages;

(ii)the linguistic outcomes of the early contacts in phonology,
    grammar and lexis.

The following speakers are already confirmed: Anders Ahlqvist
(Galway), Andrew Breeze (Navarra), Richard Coates (Sussex),
Nick Higham (Manchester), Cathair =D3 Dochairtaigh (Glasgow),
Erich Poppe (Marburg), Peter Schrijver (Munich), Hildegard L.C.
Tristram (Potsdam), Theo Vennemann (Munich), and Kalevi Wiik
(Turku).

The Colloquium will be organised by the project group =93English and
Celtic in Contact=94, whose members are Prof. Markku Filppula
(University of Joensuu), Dr. Juhani Klemola (University of Helsinki),
and Ms Heli Pitkanen (University of Joensuu). Funded by the
Academy of Finland, this project is run jointly by the Department of
 English, University of Joensuu, and the Research Unit for Variation
 and Change in English, University of Helsinki.
(For more information about the project please check the website
http://www.joensuu.fi/fld/ecc/)

Please note that only a limited number of papers (20+10 minutes)
can be accepted because of the limitations of space at the
Mekrijarvi Research Station. The conference fee of FIM 1000
(approx. =A3100 sterling) will cover 3 nights' full board and lodging at
Mekrijarvi from Thursday evening to Sunday afternoon, and coach
transportation from Joensuu to Mekrijarvi on the evening of
Thursday 23 August and back to Joensuu on Sunday 26 August.
The programme will run from Friday morning till Sunday afternoon.

Abstracts (maximum 1 page) and all enquiries should be sent to Dr
 Juhani Klemola, e-mail juhani.klemola at helsinki.fi (conventional
mail: Department of English, University of Helsinki, P.O. Box 3,
FIN-00014 University of Helsinki, Finland). The deadline for
submission  is 15 March, 2001.

------- End of forwarded message -------


From xavier.delamarre at free.fr  Tue Jan 16 08:35:28 2001
From: xavier.delamarre at free.fr (Xavier Delamarre)
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 09:35:28 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
In-Reply-To: <F86WmXE76INmn4K4dcX000079c1@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.093528.0100.>

    We must thank Douglas G. Kilday for his extremely clear, balanced and
convincing presentation of Etruscan origins.

    X. Delamarre


From stevegus at aye.net  Tue Jan 16 04:49:20 2001
From: stevegus at aye.net (Steve Gustafson)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 23:49:20 -0500
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.234920.0500.>

Douglas G. Kilday wrote:

> Etruscan nominal morphology is agglutinative and allows redetermination: an
> oblique case may be substantivized and may serve as the base for further
> inflection. E.g.:

>   tus'  n. 'niche'
>   tus't(h)i  loc. 'in the niche' TLE 630,631,655
>   tus'ur  pl. 'niches'
>   tus'urthi  loc. 'in the niches' TLE 586,627
>   tus'urthir  pl. 'those (dead spouses) in the niches' TLE 587

>   papa  n. 'grandfather'
>   papals  abl. 'from the grandfather' = 'grandchild' TLE 437
>   papalser  pl. 'grandchildren (of male)' TLE 169; Tab. Cort.

>   Calu  n. 'god of Death'
>   Calus  gen. 'belonging to Calu' cf. TLE 642
>   Calusur  pl. 'those belonging to Calu' = 'the dead'
>   Calusurasi  dat. 'to those etc.' = 'to the dead' TLE 172

> Can your favorite IE language do that?

Not often, no.

But my understanding is that the business of the reconstruction of the IE
noun case system reveals a number of both stillborn and fossil cases that,
had they been generalised, would have added to the number of cases
recoverable.  Moreover, my recollection is that the existence of languages
with otherwise conservative morphology, like Greek, Gothic, and Hittite,
that never seem to have had the full complement of Sanskrit cases, and the
strongly different system that prevails in the Tocharian languages, has led
some to suggest that the PIE cases may have been added to, rather than
subtracted from.

The Sanskrit, Celtic, and Latin cases that are formed in the plural on *-bh-
seem to be elaborations on a common suffix, at least somewhat comparable to
the Etruscan cases.  Germanic and Slavic apparently used a different suffix,
*-m-, and Slavic may have worked it the same way.  This suggests to me, that
the PIE cases may once have had agglutinative features, and that we can
still see part of the process by which they were built up.

Moreover, the *bh- suffix has been fossilized in Greek words
like -thyrephi-, "outside."  This was once a productive instrumental style
case in Greek, as revealed in Mycenean ko-ru-pi, "with helmets," and
po-ni-ki-pi, "using purple dye."   Of course, you now have N. English fossil
case forms like "seldom" and "random."  This last, at least, can be nouned
as well, and made the base of new formations like "randomize."

English and Scandinavian also exhibit the interesting trait of vagrant case
markers, of the "Queen of England's knickers" type.  PIE can't do this
either.

I may be a certifiable kook [and I cheerfully confess, no more than an
interested amateur], but it seems that the Etruscan noun morphology ---
though it has obviously been substantially reshaped --- does not rule out
that there may be a common ancestor between PIE and Etruscan.  I would not
speculate that Etruscan is a direct descendant of PIE.  Etruscan strikes me
as interesting, in that it seems a logical place to -test- theories about
super-families.

--
   Farouche et raffolant des donjons moyen bge,
   J'irais m'ensevelir au fond d'un vieux manoir:
   Comme je humerais le mysthre qui nage
   Entre de vastes murs tendus de velours noir!
                                  --- Maurice Rollinat


From proto-language at email.msn.com  Tue Jan 16 16:06:31 2001
From: proto-language at email.msn.com (proto-language)
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 10:06:31 -0600
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.100631.0600.>

Dear Rick and IEists:

 ----- Original Message -----
From: "Rick Mc Callister" <rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
Sent: Saturday, January 13, 2001 1:09 PM

<snip>

 Off the top of my head, he, and many other
general writers linked Apollo to a word meaning "to destroy"; while Steven
Zimmer, in Markey & Greppin [1990: 311 ff] offers the following

<snip>

[PR]

Some may be interested in my attempt to etymologize Apollo as *apa-, 'father' +
*leun-, 'lion', at

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/apollo.htm

Pat

PATRICK C. RYAN | PROTO-LANGUAGE at email.msn.com (501) 227-9947 * 9115 W. 34th
St. Little Rock, AR 72204-4441 USA WEBPAGES: PROTO-LANGUAGE:
http://www.geocities.com/proto-language/ and PROTO-RELIGION:
http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2803/proto-religion/indexR.html "Veit ec
at ec hecc, vindg? mei?i a netr allar n?o, geiri vnda?r . . . a ?eim
mei?i, er mangi veit, hvers hann af r?tom renn." (H?vam?l 138)


From mcv at wxs.nl  Tue Jan 16 19:30:05 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 20:30:05 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
In-Reply-To: <F86WmXE76INmn4K4dcX000079c1@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.203005.0100.>

On Sun, 14 Jan 2001 03:21:09 -0000, "Douglas G Kilday"
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

>Examination of the Lemnian stele does not favor the hypothesis of Etruscan
>emigration from Anatolia. The alphabet of the stele and similar minor
>inscriptions found on Lemnos belongs to the Euboico-Chalcidian family, not
>directly related to the Phrygian alphabet used in NW Anatolia and Gordium,
>and out of place among the East Ionian and Cycladic alphabets typical of the
>Aegean. Features include the Lemnian use of the zigzag sign as a sibilant
>(not a vowel as in Phrygian), the fricative value of H (vocalic in East
>Ionian), the psi-shaped chi (X-shaped in Cycladic and EI), and the existence
>of vau (digamma, already extinct in EI). The Lemnian alphabet is clearly an
>intrusion from the West. Indeed it is difficult to derive this alphabet
>directly from Euboea without going through the Chalcidian models of Greek
>communities in Italy. For details see Carlo de Simone, "I Tirreni a Lemnos:
>l'alfabeto" in Studi Etruschi LX, 1994, pp. 145-63.

But Lemnos is only 50km or so off the Chalcidian coast.  It is
definitely not an Ionian, Aeolic or Cycladic island.  In fact, the
surprising thing would be if the alphabet did *not* belong to the
Euboico-Chalcidian family.

>The stele contains the phrase <holaies' naphoth> which is plausibly
>'grandson of Holaie'; Lemn. Holaie = Hylaeus (A. Trombetti, "La lingua
>etrusca", Firenze 1928, pp. 188-92). <Naphoth> corresponds to Etr. <nefts>,
><nef(i)s'> which is a loanword from Umbrian (A.J. Pfiffig, "Die etruskische
>Sprache", Graz 1969, p. 297).

Larissa Bonfante says the word was borrowed in Etruscan from Latin,
and in fact it might have been borrowed from any Indo-European
language having a reflex of *nepot-, including Greek (Homeric
<nepodes>) or even Carian (<nchoth> or <nphoth> "child", if I can
trust Woudhuizen's sources [Meriggi]).  So this word is rather
inconclusive, except that it's obviously easier to go from <naphoth>
to <nefts> than the other way around.

>The stele also contains <aker tavars'io
>vanalasial>, evidently the name of the honored/deceased in regular Etruscan
>form: Aker = praenomen, Tavars'io = gentilicium, Vanalasial = metronymic.

The two lines are usually read: "vanalasial s'eronai morinail / aker
tavars'io" (I'm sure there's a reason for reading "vanalasial", but on
every copy I've seen, what I read is: "va.m.ala.sial:
s'eronaimorinail").  There is no compelling reason not to accept your
alternative reading "Aker Tavars'io / Vanalasial S'eronai Morinail",
but if the first 3 words are the name of the deceased, what is the
meaning of <s'eronaimorinail>, apparently the genitive of "in Seruna,
in Murina"?

I'm personally convinced that the name of the deceased is "S'ivai", as
the central message of the stele seems to be (repeated twice: in the
front center, and on the side):  S'ivai evistho S'eronaith sialchveis'
avis' maras'm av[is' ais'] / S'ivai avis' sialchvis' maras'm avis'
aomai  [approxiamtely: "Sivai, "evistho" in Seruna, of years 60[?]
and[?] 5[?] years died[?]"].

>Other features of the inscription indicate that "Lemnian" should be regarded
>as a dialect of Archaic Etruscan, not a separate language, and hence not
>sufficiently remote from mainland Etruscan to serve for reconstruction of
>"Uretruskisch" or "Proto-Tyrrhenian". The Lemnian phrase <sialchveis' avis'>
>corresponds to Recent Etr. <s'ealchls avils> 'of sixty years (of age)' (or
>40 if you follow Torp's numeral scheme; cf. TLE 98). Note that Etr. <avils>
>is a genitive sg./pl. 'of year(s)'. The Lemnian dative phrase <holaies'i
>phokiasiale> 'to Hylaeus the Phocaean' corresponds in form to Recent Etr.
><larthiale hulchniesi> (TLE 84) and several Arch. Etr. dedicatory
>inscriptions.

On the other hand, Lemnian shows little or no trace of the ubiquitous
Etruscan 3rd.p. preterit ending -ce (there is <phoke>, but in view of
<Holaies'i Phokiasiale>, one can doubt whether this is a verb or a
reference to Phocaea), and it is in fact impossible to recognize any
verbal form in Lemnian (maybe -io ?).  The gap between <naphoth> and
<nefts> has already been commented on.  Neither <z> nor <f> occur in
this short fragment (and how would Lemnian have rendered <f>?), and
Etr. <u> (no <o>) is Lemnian <o> (no <u>) [this might merely be an
orthographic issue, in view of Morina=Murina].  Lemnian <mara> in the
formula <sialchvis' avis' maras'm avis'> must surely be a numeral, but
fits none of the Etruscan ones (the only one that comes even remotely
close is <mach> "5", a little bit closer [but still remote] if we
consider the derivative <muvalch> "50", showing that the -ch was not
part of the root, but probably identical to -c(h) "and" [cf. PIE
*pen-kwe "... and 5"], so something like *mawa-k(h) "[... and ]5",
*mawa-alkh "50").  In sum, I see little reason to think that Lemnian
differs only trivially from Etruscan, despite the fact that it is
clearly related to it.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From kcummings at iprimus.com.au  Thu Jan 18 01:17:45 2001
From: kcummings at iprimus.com.au (Katherine Cummings)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 12:17:45 +1100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs) Ref Hercle, Zimite
Message-ID: <THU.18.JAN.2001.121745.1100.>

Attic cognates in Etruscan

1
Herakles = Hercle

 Hercle is a mild profanity in the plays of TERENTIVS. This demotic form was
considered to derive, not from Lt HERCVLES, but from Gk Herakles,
Approximately, Godammit! / Bloody Hell!
 But is it Etruscan?
 Did Roman citizens of the mid-2nd BPE all swear in Etruscan?

2
<it may be that "Zimite" represents something like /(d?)zi:
<m. i te/, with something like syllabic /m./ as the second syllable,
<preserving the four syllables of the borrowed Greek word.

 Is there any known language which has intervocalic syllabic continuants? In
what way would this be different from a lengthened consonant:

/dzi:m:ite/
, as in Modern Italian
dimmi
/dim:i/
?
 This would lose the syllable count of the, er, borrowed Greek word.

But it's exactly the syllable count that is the first thing to go in borrowings
between languages, as borrowing alters the phonology. English schwah, uniformly
centralizing unstressed vowels, can effectively reduce

Peru to one syllable
Portugal to two
and Barcelona to three

. Just as epenthetic vowels in Brazilian Portuguese can make five syllables out
of Uzbequistao, with a tilde on the a, meaning Uzbekistan:
/uzibekistau/
, with the /a/ nasal.

 The last thing to expect from any borrowing is preservation of the syllable
count.

 The name of Diomedes as a warrior in the Mycenean force against Troy could
logically be billed as a borrowing from Gk into Et. Equally logically, though,
both forms could derive by descent or borrowing from an outside source. Crete
shows that names of Homer's heroes had been common coin. Is there evidence that
Homer's heroes had newly-minted names?

 Respects

Chester Graham
Chester at britanic-ih.com.br


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Sun Jan 21 06:30:22 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 06:30:22 -0000
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <SUN.21.JAN.2001.063022.0000.>

Pat Ryan (6 Jan 2001) wrote:

>Could you tell me the source for the opinion that Roma is derived from
>Etruscan Ruma? And what is it supposed to mean?

This opinion is brought to you by the
"can't-find-plausible-IE-cognates-so-it-must-be-Etruscan" school of Latin
etymology.

The Etruscan form Ruma is inferred from Cneve Tarchunies Rumach (equiv. to
Lat. Gnaeus Tarquinius Romanus), slain by the Vulcentine warrior Marce
Camitlnas as depicted in paintings from the "Francois" tomb of Vel Saties
(TLE 297-300; CIE 5266-75). There is also a gentilicium Rumate/Rumathe (CIE
1944,4883,4885) meaning 'from Rome'.

Ruma is most likely an adaptation of Roma, not the other way around.
Etruscan does not distinguish /o:u/ and generally uses U to replace O in
borrowed roots. On the other hand when native Etruscan names having U before
a single consonant in the root are borrowed into Latin, the U is retained
(e.g. Spurinna, Fusios/Furius). Hence if Ruma were Etruscan in origin, one
would expect Latin Ruma as well. The name Roma probably predates Etruscan
influence in the area and comes from some other source.

The most plausible conjecture for the meaning of Roma is 'ford, crossing',
since it was the most practical site for traffic between Etruria and Latium
to cross the Tiber. 'Bridge' is out, as there was no bridge here before the
Pons Sublicius, and there is no evidence that the city's name was changed
when the bridge was built.

DGK


From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Jan 15 22:13:26 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 16:13:26 -0600
Subject: Etruscan Deonyms
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.161326.0600.>

        I guess probably most of those wgod-names are manglings from Greek,
perhaps even "Aplu".  Still, I venture to wonder (having no etymological
dictionaries of any kind here to guide me) whether some of these etymologies
may not be specifically Greek rather than generally IE.  I have not been
able, in my somewhat pathetic efforts, to find "laos" outside of Greek, for
example, though it's probably out there, somewhere ...

Dr. David L. White


From dlwhite at texas.net  Mon Jan 15 22:18:45 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 16:18:45 -0600
Subject: Greek Gods
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.161845.0600.>

>>I have heard that of the Greek gods only Zeus is IE.

> I wouldn't go that far - surely we have a few more

        Sorry.  The statement I was thinking of referred only to the major
(12?) gods of the pantheon.

Dr. David L. White


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Jan 16 03:19:21 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 21:19:21 -0600
Subject: Early Goths as Drinkers
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.211921.0600.>

        Harking back to an earlier emissive, I would like to know more about
how the name of the Goths is supposed to have been from two different agent
nouns, each from a different ablaut grade.
        It would also be good to know how the /o/ got there in Latin.  One
possibility is that the name (as it reached Latin) is indeed an "other-name"
from other Germanic, in which case /o/ rather than /u/ in a past-participle
of /geutan/ (more or less) would in fact be regular.  Or, to put it perhaps
more clearly, the from with /o/ would be the non-Gothic Germanic, whereas
the form with /u/ would be the Gothic version.  That the Greeks were in
contact with the Goths whereas the Romans were in contact with other
Germanic tribes might explain this difference, which as far as I can see has
no other explanation.

Dr. David L. White


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Jan 16 03:28:55 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 21:28:55 -0600
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.212855.0600.>

> From what I gather, feles was originally applied to a ferret, mongoose or
> other type of weasel. I like your ailouros etymology a lot more

    A truly minor point ...
    Mongooses (-geese?) are viverrids, not mustelids, and only one type of
viverrid, the genet (not mongoose) of Iberia (spreading recently to France
and even western Germany), occurs in Europe.  For the Romans to call a
mongoose a cat would have been more or less as for us to call skunks
'polecats' or a kind of racoon 'ringtail cats'.   Not that that stops us.
Speaking of deplorable, or understandable, vagueness in terms for animal, it
is within the realm of possibility the word for 'fox' and 'wolf' were not
originally distinguished, which would explain a few things.

Dr. David L. White


From X99Lynx at aol.com  Tue Jan 16 13:20:09 2001
From: X99Lynx at aol.com (X99Lynx at aol.com)
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 08:20:09 EST
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.082009.EST.>

In a message dated 1/15/2001 9:52:56 PM, rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu writes:
<< Buck [1949: 181] suggests that Greek aie/louros, ai/louros "cat, marten,
ferret, weasel, etc." may be from aio/los "quick" + oura/: "tail" >>

Yes, but it's exactly the ferret connection to this and other cat words that
suggest the concept of the animals was functional rather than descriptive,
ferrets not looking a lot like cats except perhaps in size.

The tail idea also occurs in <skiouros> squirrel, interpreted as
'shadow-tail.'   But the shadow part <skio-) doesn't seem to make a lot of
sense.  (Perhaps, <skiros>, sometimes land overgrown with bushes, scrub.)

Without going into gory details, <aiolos/aioleo/aiolizo> also seems to refer
to the variegated or glistening pieces of clothing, embroidery, sheen, the
making of multi-colored garments, embellishments or adornments, like fur
collars; cf. <aiolomitres>, "glittering girdle",in Homer; multi-colored
turban; <allix>, man's upper garment.  However, <killouros> wagtail; <kolouro
s> stump-tailed.

There are a lot of Gr words that refer to snake or serpents, of course, with
similar forms, e.g., <molouros>, <ouraios>, and one wonders if 'tail' and
'snake' originally shared just a descriptive element or whether a common
function was involved.

Regards,
S. Long


From kastytis.beitas at gf.vu.lt  Wed Jan 17 05:51:18 2001
From: kastytis.beitas at gf.vu.lt (Kastytis Beitas)
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 06:51:18 +0100
Subject: cat < ?
In-Reply-To: <l03130339b68665772d0d@[209.147.211.22]>
Message-ID: <WED.17.JAN.2001.065118.0100.>

I can propose other possible origin for some 'non-cat' cat words.
I think it is a rather frequent case when predatory animal is named
according its prey.
For example, in Lithuanian:
peleda "owl"                   <--  pele "mous" + eda "to eat",
zhuvedra "tern on gull"  <--  zhuvis 'fish' + eda "to eat" (or edrus
"voracious")
In English:
polecat or polcat at 1320 "ferret" <-- Old French poule, pol "fowl, hen" + cat

It is semantically plausible that rodents names can be transformed to mouse
hunter's (cat's or some Mustellidae mammal's) name.
Similarity of motivation of these predator naming is seen in English
polecat "ferret; Mustella putorius".
And names of small rodents (and sometimes of shrew though shrew isn't a
rodent but is similar to mice) are related to words with meanings "to make
a hole; to peck etc". For example, Lithuanian kirstukas "shrew" <-- kirsti
"to hack, to cut" or English shrew (etymology unknown?) and to shred.
This relation is based on holes that are made by mices in pelts, clothes
etc. or shredding or chapping straw or similar material to small litter...
The part of semantic niche net is similar to this:

"cat" "marten" <-- "mouse"
                                   A
                                    |
  "to peck; to make hole; to hit etc" --> "to beat to pulp"
                             |
|
                            V
V
"to smash to parts, to make small"     "pulp; gruel etc; material of
similar consistence"

For example:
1. Latin  feles 'cat' reminds of Lithuanian pele 'mouse'. In Watkins
Dictionary of Indo-European Roots pel- means "to thrust, to strike".

>I suppose Hindi bhili "cat" would be too fortuitous to suggest a connection
>based on *bhil-, *bhel-?

2. Hindi bhili 'cat' <-> Russian bilo 'thing for beating', Eng. beat etc.
(maybe this bhili is cognate to Lithuanian pele)

> >In Latin, it is the ferret that gets the job of mouser by
> >name, <must?la> or <mustella>, indicating maybe that cats were not that
> >common early on.

3. So mustella 'marten' <-> Latin mus, English mouse, German Maus, Polish
mysz, Russian mysh'

Chernykh in his 'Historically-Etymological Dictionary of Modern Russian
Language' writes that Latin mus, Polish mysz, Russian mysh' may be origined
from IE word with meanings "plunderer, spoiler". Chernykh states that mus
and mysh' are cognates with Russian mukha 'fly' /and Latin musca 'fly'/.
This comparison of mouse anf fly supports my hypothesis, because other
possible meaning for 'fly-words' is a "bitter; one who bites". This fits to
"bee-words" too: in Lithuanian bite "bee" etc. Armenian muk 'mouse' is
similar to Russian muka "flour; what is grinded' and Russian muka
"suffering"...

English mouse and German Maus are similar to Russian musor "debris;
litter". Chernykh states that musor is cognate with Russian musolit'
"slabber, slaver" and both them are originated from IE *meu-, *mou- "damp,
moist" and "liquid dirt; mud". But this cognateness is between musor and
mud, moist is more distant in my opinion: musor is originated as "litter,
produced by chapping (or by mice?)"...

>Someone, maybe Partridge 1958, links feles to Latin meles "badger"

4. Latin meles "badger" <-> words with meanings 'to grind; to transfor to
small parts'
English mill
Lithuanian male is past tense verb with meaning 'grind, mill' (but
Lithuanian meleta means a few species of woodpecker)
Russian melet 'to mill (present tense)', molot 'hammer'

> >Gr <kassuo:>, Att. <kattuo:>, to sew, to stitch together like a shoemaker.
> ><kattus>, a piece of leather (or animal skin.)  <katateino:>, stretch, draw
> >tigth, especially a cord or strip of animal skin.  Perhaps this is somehow
> >the source of "catgut", for which I haven't seen a decent explanation.
> >(Attested is a Persian or Babylonian fur prepared from mouse skins,
> ><gaunacum> or <kaunak?>, so anything was possible.)

So there is some basis to state that this all-Indo-European word cat in all
its variations may by descendant of some Indo-European root with meaning
"to hit, to strike, to make hole etc". Distant cognate of this hypothetical
(?) root may be Watkins's kat- "to fight" and kat- "down".

May be distant relatives of this are Lithuanian kietas and Latvian ciets
"hard (vs. soft)".

Or cut in Chambers Dictionary of Etymology:
,,Probably before 1300 either as: cutten <...>, kitten <...>; of uncertain
orrigin (possibly borrowed from  Scandinavian source; compare Swedish
dialect kuta, kata "to cut", kuta "knife", and Icelandic kuti "knife". ''

This excerpt from Chambers Dict.of Etym. reminds on my old posting (Lith.
peilis "knife" <-> Lith. pele "mous"):

 >The similar case is with Lithuanian "peilis" 'knife'. It is similar to
 >Russian "pila" 'saw', Lat. "pilum" 'heavy javelin, pestle', OHG "pfil"
'>arrow, stake'.
 >In this context OE "pil" 'stake, shaft, spike' and Eng "pile" 'arrow, dart'
 >may be not borrowings as it is stated in Chambers Dict. of Etym. ( p.794)]
 >but words of common Indo-European origin.

So distant relativeof English cat or Lithuanian kate "male cat" or Russian
kot "male cat" may be English kettle, Lithuanian katilas "kettle":
In Chambers Dict.of Etym.:

,,kettle -- <...> borrowed directly from Latin catillus "small bowl, dish
or plate", diminutive of catinus "bowl, dish, pot"; perhaps cognate with
Greek kotyle "small vessel, cup" <...>. ''

Hypothetical chain of semantic changes from kettle to cat:
cat "hunter of mouse" <-> ?? "who makes holes" <-> "to strike" <-> "to
hollow out" <-> "vessel, plate, cup, made by hollowing" <-> "kettle".

**********************************
Kastytis Beitas
----------------------------------
Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics
Faculty of Natural Sciences
Vilnius University
Ciurlionio 21
Vilnius 2009, Lithuania
----------------------------------
Fax:     (370 2)235409
E-Mail:  kastytis.beitas at gf.vu.lt
**********************************


From dlwhite at texas.net  Tue Jan 16 03:33:07 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 21:33:07 -0600
Subject: Origin of Cats
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.213307.0600.>

> Do domestic cats only descend from North African cats? Or did they
> also interbreed with various species of small local wildcats?

        Not various species, as 1) the African wildcat, 2) the European
wildcat, and 3) the domestic cat are all these days considered sub-species
of a single species. A little genetic inflow from European wild cats would,
I think, have been virtually inevitable, though perhaps there is something
in the genetic information supplied by others that contradicts this.

Dr. David L. White


From r.clark at auckland.ac.nz  Tue Jan 16 04:29:01 2001
From: r.clark at auckland.ac.nz (Ross Clark (FOA LING))
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 17:29:01 +1300
Subject: Calcutta/Kolkatta
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.172901.1300.>

Can you explain exactly what sorts of phonological difficulties "Kolkatta",
"Mumbai", "Chennai" or "Basu" would have presented for "early Brits"?

Ross Clark

-----Original Message-----
From: Shilpi Misty Bhadra [mailto:evenstar at mail.utexas.edu]
Sent: Saturday, 13 January 2001 10:39 a.m.

[ moderator snip ]

Calcutta is now Kolkatta in the latest Indian news. Mumbai has been around
for a long time, as Chennai for Madras. The early Brits had a hard time
with pronouncing Indian names, although they didn't to have much trouble
with Delhi (which hasn't changed). ;) My family is from Calcutta/Kolkatta.
My mother's maiden name was Basu, but changed to Bose, because it would be
easier for the Brits to pronounce. But she hasn't changed her maiden name
spelling ... yet! ;)


From rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu  Wed Jan 17 13:10:55 2001
From: rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu (rohan.oberoi at cornell.edu)
Date: Wed, 17 Jan 2001 08:10:55 -0500
Subject: Calcutta/Kolkatta
Message-ID: <WED.17.JAN.2001.081055.0500.>

[ moderator edited ]

>Calcutta is now Kolkatta in the latest Indian news. Mumbai has been around
>for a long time, as Chennai for Madras. The early Brits had a hard time
>with pronouncing Indian names, although they didn't to have much trouble
>with Delhi (which hasn't changed). ;) My family is from Calcutta/Kolkatta.
>My mother's maiden name was Basu, but changed to Bose, because it would be
>easier for the Brits to pronounce. But she hasn't changed her maiden name
>spelling ... yet! ;)
>
>Shilpi Misty Bhadra

The problematic nature of these exercises is well illustrated by
Shilpi's transcription of the new name as Kolkatta.  While her double
't' is more (though hardly completely) faithful to the Bengali
pronunciation, it's wrong.  The new 'official' name is 'Kolkata'.

Transcribing it in what many see (wrongly) as India's 'national'
language would give something closer to 'Kalkatta'.  But, since there
is no good mapping of the sounds of Indian languages to a Roman
alphabet that is in general use for writing (other than in a few
specialised applications, like the names of Hindi films), no
solution based on a Roman alphabet will work.

I think it is therefore an extreme oversimplification, Shilpi, to say
that this is a matter of Brits having trouble with Indian names.  They
certainly did, but Indians have as much trouble with Indian names; I
have yet to meet an Indian non-Bengali-speaker who uses an 'o' instead
of an 'a' in the first syllable of Calcutta (however spelt).

I have tried (and failed) to understand why changing the 'official'
English version is such an issue in India.  It definitely has
something to do with the unique linguistic/political status of English
in South Asia, and probably with some national insecurities tied in to
that.  After all, you don't see the the Russians agitating for Moscow
to be changed to Moskva, the Poles for Warsaw to be changed to
Varshava, or the Italians for Rome to be changed to Roma.  In those
cases, I believe, the authoritative and official version is regarded
as the the one in the local language and script, and all other
versions in foreign languages are accepted as convenience dictates.

But, for Calcutta, declaring that the official name will be the city's
name as written in the Bengali (sorry, Bangla) script is not an option
because the Central government would never accept the precedent.  Nor
is declaring it the name as written in Hindi in the Devanagari script,
because the Bengalis would never accept that.  Hence the
unsatisfactory compromise of Kolkata.

Most Indians had never heard of Chennai before the name was changed,
and the majority of non-Maharashtrians do not seem to use the name
'Mumbai' to this day.  (Also, Punjabis generally refer to all South
Indians as 'Madrasis', a perfectly reasonable nomenclature derived
from the time when most of South India was part of the Madras
Presidency, and Chennai is very unlikely to make much headway against
this).

Finally, the Brits quite certainly did have trouble with Delhi, which
is the only city in India that could make a good case for a reversion,
precisely because it was the only one of the four (Bangalore being a
recent upstart) that became a metropolis before and without British
occupation.  (Calcutta, Madras and Bombay were all 'greenfield'
developments by the British -- there was nothing there before the
development of British factories and administrative capitals, to say
nothing of the security offered to traders by British arms -- it is
not a coincidence that Bombay eclipsed Surat precisely at the time
when the Mughals were no longer there to defend the latter city, which
was twice sacked by Shivaji).  The old pronunciation of Delhi could be
roughly transcribed 'Dehli' (Urdu poets from Delhi would take the name
Dehlavi); this pronunciation, I can report, is still the standard one
in use by West Punjabis.  The new one in Indian languages is more like
'Dilli' (or Dylli).

As an aside, Shilpi, the Bengalis really don't have much of a case
against the British for being unable to pronounce 'Basu' (or
'Chattopadhyay'), considering that most Bengalis still refer to Sikhs
as "Shiks".

Sorry, this is probably more appropriate for an Indology list, though
the languages are all certainly Indo-European.

:)

cheers,
Rohan.


From connolly at memphis.edu  Mon Jan 15 22:59:27 2001
From: connolly at memphis.edu (Leo A. Connolly)
Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 22:59:27 +0000
Subject: la leche (was: Re: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro..)..
Message-ID: <MON.15.JAN.2001.225927.0000.>

> Leo Connolly wrote:

> >The larger question is why we have _leche_ (as well as It. _latte_, Fr.
> >_lait_ when there was no **_lactem_ so long as the word was neuter.  But if
> >_lactem_ developed, then gender reassignment would be a must, and formally
> >there would have been no reason to choose masculine over feminine.  Why
> >shouldn't a product of the female breast become feminine?  If anything, it's
> >the masculine forms that need explaining.

> Diogo Almeida wrote:

> I'm no specialist and I don't know what was the vulgar latin or the early
> romance word for milk on the Peninsula at that time, but my latin dictionary
> gives "lacte, is" for milk (and "lac" as an archaic form). I think that
> "lactem" then, would have been the accusative form (I have to rely on my
> memory, though, since I don't have any Latin grammar with me :) ).
> Portuguese, as a general rule, got the accusative form of latin words. So
> "lactem" being the accusative, it seems likely that the word in Portuguese
> developed from that form (I don't have an etymological dictionary with me,
> though). And since neuter was absorbed by the masculine gender in general
> (at least in Portuguese, I don't know about Spanish), i don't see any
> problems with "leite" being masculine. On the other hand, "leche" as
> feminine is strange to me, especially because Portuguese and Spanish
> normally agree when it comes to the gender of the words.

I'm no specialist either (Germanic philology is my thing, at least officially).
But my Latin dictionary (an old Cassell's from the 1930s) lists only _lac_, not
_lacte_.  Still, it is conceivable that _lacte_ arose in Vulgar Latin, and it
would be a perfectly good ancestor of _leche_ et al.

Connolly again:

    >"formally there would have been no reason to choose masculine over
feminine.

> >Why shouldn't a product of the female breast become feminine?  If anything,
> >it's the masculine forms that need explaining."

Diogo again:

> If the gender systems of Portuguese and Spanish were mainly semantically
> driven, maybe. But they aren't. There is a strong formal element in gender
> assingment in these languages. And as I said before, I think that neuter
> words become masculine in Portuguese most of the time (and I guess this is
> also true for Spanish).

Well, yes -- the point is that in the Latin third declension, masculine and
feminine forms are normally indistinguishable, so that the word for 'forehead'
is _frons, frontis_ (feminine) and for 'mountain' _mons, montis_ (masculine).
The reason why Latin neuters usually become masculine in  Romance is that most
belong to the second declension, otherwise the home of many masculine nouns and
only a few feminines, from which they differed only in the nominative singular
and nominative accusative plural.  There were no first-declension neuters, so
they had no particular to turn feminine along with most of the rest of that
declension.  Some third-declension neuters ended up *looking* masculine:
_corpus_ 'body' looked suspiciously like a second-declension masculine
nominative, so it is no surprise to find Spanish _cuerpo_ masculine rather than
feminine.  But there were no third-declension neuters that *looked* feminine.
Still, I had no trouble finding one that is now feminine in Spanish: _u:ber_
(gen. _u:beris_) 'udder, teat, breat' has yielded _la ubre_ 'udder'.  Are we
surprised?  We shouldn't be, just as we are not surprised that the formally
ambiguous Latin _penis_ is masculine rather than feminine.

This from a non-specialist.  What do the experts say?

Leo

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From edsel at glo.be  Tue Jan 16 12:23:06 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 13:23:06 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.132306.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Sent: Monday, January 15, 2001 12:19 PM

[snip]
> 3 of the 4 possible variations of /a:e/
> correspondence are found in presumed substratal words:

>   Lat. cerrus, It. cerro, Sp. carrasco 'holm-oak'
>   Lat. larix, It. larice, Sp. alerce 'larch'
>   Lat. betula, It. betulla, Sp. abedul 'birch'
>   It. cheppia, Sp. sa'balo, saboga, saboca 'shad'

> These are practically the only examples I have, so I don't know whether the
> vowel-alternation and prosthetic /a/ are strictly determined by phonetic
> environment.
[snip]
> DGK

[Ed]

In the case of Castilian you have to take into account the Arab influence:
sometimes words of Romance origin were adopted by the Spanish-Arab population
and then got back into Castilian in their arabicized form, often with the
definite article al- (and its alternate forms, depending on the assimilation of
the initial "sun" consonant of the following word) attached to it. <alerche> is
such a case: actually <al-lerce>, possibly via some Arabic form **al-lars vel
sim..  <abedul> is possibly a simplification of *al-bedul (no assimilation: b
is a "moon" letter). I don't think these a's are prosthetic/epenthetic like the
e of <especial>.

Note also that Arabic has not really a vowel /e/, except in some regional
speech, nor /o/. In the transition to Spanish, the Arabic vowels often undergo
surprising changes, or are added. Examples: <alc?zar> from Lat. castra, via
al-kasr. Cast. Alicante from Lat. Lucentum, via al-(lu)kant, but in Catalan:
Alacant; it is pretty strange that Lat. c suvived as /k/, since the Arabs came
there (713 A.D.) after the palatalization of Lat. c (unless some regional
peculiarity intervened, like an early dialectal /e/ > /a/, or maybe the Iberian
name that served as a substrate to Latin had an /a/ - I really don't know).

<Carrasco> has all the characteristics of a somewhat complicated origin: it is
almost certainly a compound, with the suffix -(V)sco, which can be IE but just
as well Iberian or Basque, even though that wouldn't affect its meaning. I
would guess that the Latin form is derived from a substrate word with /a/. The
Spanish word cannot possibly be derived directly from the late-Latin form,
because the Latin c would have become /T/ (English th), not /k/ [In Sp. cerro
means 'small mountain, hill']. On the other hand, no such objection exists for
It. cerro.  Could <carrasco> and Lat. cerrus /kerrus/ be related to a pre-IE
root and/or Celtic, for a certain type of mountain landscape? In such case, the
suffix -sko would make a lot of sense. Just a thought.

Ed. Selleslagh


From miskec4096 at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 16 21:25:15 2001
From: miskec4096 at hotmail.com (Kreso Megyeral)
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 22:25:15 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.222515.0100.>

>I'm no specialist and I don't know what was the vulgar latin or the early
>romance word for milk on the Peninsula at that time, but my latin dictionary
>gives "lacte, is" for milk (and "lac" as an archaic form). I think that
>"lactem" then, would have been the accusative form (I have to rely on my
>memory, though, since I don't have any Latin grammar with me :) ).

It can't, since all the nouns ending on -e are still neuter in Latin.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Tue Jan 16 21:54:49 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Tue, 16 Jan 2001 16:54:49 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
In-Reply-To: <F33zgH7zCEWHNBMA58S00018d1d@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <TUE.16.JAN.2001.165449.0500.>

[snip]
>>[RMCC]
>>	[snip] re: Spanish sabueso "bloodhound" [snip]

>I would guess directly from substrate. Otherwise the /a/ of the first
>syllable is also hard to derive from Latin /e/. The first "u" of segusius is
>presumed long on the basis of "grecizzato" egousia, which I neglected to
>mention in my posting. 3 of the 4 possible variations of /a:e/
>correspondence are found in presumed substratal words:

>  Lat. cerrus, It. cerro, Sp. carrasco 'holm-oak'
>  Lat. larix, It. larice, Sp. alerce 'larch'
>  Lat. betula, It. betulla, Sp. abedul 'birch'
>  It. cheppia, Sp. sa'balo, saboga, saboca 'shad'

carrasco is a real can of worms
It resembles Latin quercus "oak" and various *garr-, *karr- words for
"hard" enough to fire people up but the clues are complicated.

also Spanish la/rice for "larch"
I'm guessing that both alerce and abedul are via Mozarabic
Here's what I've found on "larch"
l?rice, alerce "larch"

	< Latin larix, larice (f., m.) "m?l?ze", "resin de m?l?ze"
[Ernout & Meillet 1939: 524; Migliorini 1966: 60]
	< Latin larix, laricem (acc.) "larch" [Partridge 1958: 337]
	< ? Alpine language, Celtic? [Ernout & Meillet 1939: 524]
	< larik- [Partridge 1958: 337]
	< Celtic, Alpine language [Partridge 1958: 337]
	see German L?rche, MHG lerche < Latin [Partridge 1958: 337]

I'd expect something like *bedoja or *bedolla as cognate to Italian betulla
or maybe *bedola from Latin *betula (with short /i/)

Here's what Corominas has to say re: Spanish sa/balo
sa/balo "shad"
	c. 1330 [Corominas 1980]
	savalus 961 [Corominas 1980]
	see Portuguese s?vel 1223; Catalan & Aragonese savoga 1335, saboca
[Corominas 1980]
	< ? Celtic samos "summer" [Corominas 1980]
	< *sabolos [Corominas 1980]
	< *sabauca [Corominas 1980]
	< samauca; -m- > -b- typical of Celtic [Corominas 1980]
	< ? Great Britain [Corominas 1980]
Italian cheppia definitely looks out of place in regard to Corominas's entry

	If they came into Spanish via Mozarabic, the vowels may have been
affected by the Arabic vowel system. But someone more versed in Mozarabic
would have to confirm [or deny] that.

[snip]
>>	So Alessio proposed the Lusitanians = "IE Ligurians" = Illyrians
>>hypothesis? By "IE Ligurians", I mean the non-Celtic, non-Italic IE
>>speakers of N Italy & S France
>>	I've also seen claims that the Sikani themselves were Ligurians
>>based on toponymic similarities between names in Sicily and Liguria

	The IE vs. non-IE "Ligurians" are a headache. I liked Corominas's
use of Sorotaptic but does anyone else use it?

[snip]

	I think Pallottini equated non-Celtic, non-Italic IE-speakers with
"Ligurians" back in the 30s or 40s

>In my own humble view, the Siculi probably represent the first wave of
>IE-speakers into Italy, responsible for forms in which PIE medial *dh has
>become /t/ (Aitne/Aetna, Rutuli, Liternum/Leuternon, and probably the source
>of Etr. lautni 'freedman'). Thucydides (VI.2.4) says there were still some
>Siculi in Italy in his time. The Sicani claimed to be Iberians, but if this
>term is understood geographically, they might be identifiable with the
>non-Celtic, non-Italic IE-speakers of Liguria, and their later migration to
>Sicily might explain the similarity of toponyms.
[snip]

>DGK

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


From miskec4096 at hotmail.com  Wed Jan 17 23:10:10 2001
From: miskec4096 at hotmail.com (Kreso Megyeral)
Date: Thu, 18 Jan 2001 00:10:10 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <THU.18.JAN.2001.001010.0100.>

Rick McAllister wrote:
>How common is this phenomenon in other Romance
>languages and other other languages with grammatical gender?

Interesting thing with disappearing of Latin neuter nouns happens in
Romanian. Romanian actually has neuter gender, but in singular forms it's
equal to masculine, while in plural to feminine. Even the definite article,
which is postpositive in Romanian, doesn't have its own form, but follows
the same pattern.

In one Spanish grammar written in Croatian I found that there are still some
words in Spanish considered neuter (of course, not "leche") that express
collectives or some young animals. The article quoted is LO. Is it indeed,
or is it some interpretation of the author?


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Sun Jan 21 03:54:24 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Sun, 21 Jan 2001 03:54:24 -0000
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <SUN.21.JAN.2001.035424.0000.>

Leo A. Connolly (10 Jan 2001) wrote:

>The larger question is why we have _leche_ (as well as It. _latte_, Fr. _lait_
>when there was no **_lactem_ so long as the word was neuter.  But if _lactem_
>developed, then gender reassignment would be a must, and formally there would
>have been no reason to choose masculine over feminine.  Why shouldn't a
>product of the female breast become feminine?  If anything, it's the masculine
>forms that need explaining.

Some brief comments: First, *lactem is not required to explain the /t/ in
the Romance forms. Varro used the neuter <lact>: lactuca [dicitur] a lacte,
quod holus id habet lact (L.L. V.21.3). Caesar reputedly scoffed at <lact>
on the grounds that no Latin word could end in two stops, but it is
reasonable that <lact> was the form in common use while <lac> belonged
strictly to the urban dialect of Rome.

Second, if the word for 'milk' had been de-neutered to *lactis, it would
have had the same form as the established word for 'intestine': ita cibi
vacivitate venio lassis lactibus (Plaut. Curc. 319); fundolum a fundo, quod
non ut reliquae lactes, sed ex una parte sola apertum (Varr. L.L. V.22.7).

Third, terms denoting products, attributes, or appendages of a particular
"natural" gender which carry a different "grammatical" gender are too
numerous to list here (and some are inappropriate for general audiences).

DGK


From anthony.appleyard at UMIST.AC.UK  Fri Jan 19 08:41:41 2001
From: anthony.appleyard at UMIST.AC.UK (anthony.appleyard@umist.ac.uk)
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 03:41:41 -0500
Subject: Pre-PIE as a PIE substrate?
Message-ID: <FRI.19.JAN.2001.034141.0500.>

On Mon, 6 Nov 2000 18:44:37 +0200, Ante Aikio <anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi>
wrote:

> However, there are lexical correspondences between western Uralic and
> Germanic which have no further etymologies in either language family, e.g.
>   Germ. *saiwa- ~ Samic *saajv? 'fresh water',
>   Finnic *kauka- 'long' ~ Germ. *hauha- 'high',
>   Germ. *ailda- 'fire' ~ Samic *aalt?-nk?-ss? 'lightning'.
> But all of these can be explained as borrowings in one direction or the
> other, so there is no special reason to asssume separate borrowing from
> some substrate language in these cases.

Please where can I find a complete list of these words which are found in
both Germanic and western Uralic?

Someone said in gothic-l at egroups.com that archaeologies ancestral to the
modern South Saami (= Lappish) culture have been found in all of Scandinavia
dand as far south as Hamburg in Germany. If so, then perhaps in South Saamic
we have a living descendant of one of the many aboriginal substratum
languages that incoming Indo-European overrode so long ago, and the above
words and their like are pre-IE substratum words. If Finno-Ugrian languages
were once spoken in all Scandinavia and Denmark and a long way into
Schleswig-Holstein, then their speakers in those southern areas would have
changed from tundra hunters to a denser population and more settled mode of
life as the climate got warmer as the Ice Age ended and then farming and
livestock herding came in. That increases the chance that Germanic started
as Indo-European spoken with a "south coast of the Baltic" type Finno-Ugrian
accent. That might also explain peculiar Germanic features such as weak-type
adjectives declining different from 1st and 2nd declension nouns.

Perhaps also, Balto-Slavonic (Lithuanian etc) started as IE spoken with a
"south-east coast of the Baltic" Finno-Ugrian accent; Estonian and Livonian
would be the nearest living relatives of that area's pre-IE substratum.


From mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk  Tue Jan 23 08:37:37 2001
From: mclssaa2 at fs2.mt.umist.ac.uk (Anthony Appleyard)
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 08:37:37 GMT
Subject: words specific to Saamic /  Finnish and Germanic
Message-ID: <TUE.23.JAN.2001.083737.GMT.>

 On Fri, 3 Nov 2000, Rick Mc Callister wrote:
 >       Does any of this substrate overlap with the so-called "Baltic"
 > substrate in Germanic; i.e. words of non-IE, non-Uralic origin such as
 > ship, sea, seal (animal), etc.?

English "ship", Germanic "skip-", seems to have a relative in Greek: {skaphos}.
Also, Greek {skapto:} = "I dig"; the connection is likely via dugout canoes
(made by hollowing out a big single log).

  Ante Aikio <anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi> wrote on Mon 6 Nov 2000 at
18:44:37 +0200 (Subject: Re: Pre-PIE as a PIE substrate?):-

> However, there are lexical correspondences between western Uralic and
> Germanic which have no further etymologies in either language family, e.g.
> Germ. *saiwa- ~ Samic *saajv? 'fresh water',
> Finnic *kauka- 'long' ~ Germ. *hauha- 'high',
> Germ. *ailda- 'fire' ~ Samic *aalt?-nk?-ss? 'lightning'. ...

Please where can I get a complete list of these "Germanic and Finno-Ugrian
only" words?

Someone on Gothic-L says that archaeology which is a lineal ancestor of modern
Saamic (= Lappish) has been found as far south as Hamburg in Germany. If this
means that an ancestor of Saamic was once spoken in all Scandinavia and Denmark
and well into Schleswig-Holstein, then Germanic could have started as IE spoken
with a Saami accent even if it developed south of the Baltic Sea.


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 23 20:04:06 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Tue, 23 Jan 2001 20:04:06 -0000
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
Message-ID: <TUE.23.JAN.2001.200406.0000.>

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (10 Jan 2001) wrote:

>[DGK]
> >I would add the tail-end of "five"; Goth. <fimf> suggests Early PIE *pempwe.

>[MCV]
>It would be a candidate, were it not that I rather like the idea of
>*pen-kwe "...and five" (an etymology similar to that of "ampersand").

[DGK]
If the second syllable is indeed the enclitic 'and', the first syllable is
more likely in my opinion to be 'one', with a "full hand" of four (*oktom?)
understood.

I still think *pempwe is a better fit for Early PIE. Otherwise the Germanic
forms require an ad-hoc assimilation of *p__kw__ to *p__p__ mirroring the
Italo-Celtic assimilation to *kw__kw__. But if this happened, why wasn't
*perkw- affected (Lat. quercus, OE fyrh, OHG forha)? We don't have
*firf-trees.

Is there any objection to *-kwe coming from *-pwe? Does this enclitic appear
in Hittite?


From jer at cphling.dk  Thu Jan 25 15:38:16 2001
From: jer at cphling.dk (Jens Elmegaard Rasmussen)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 16:38:16 +0100
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
In-Reply-To: <F110M9JkaELLdpXshN400000efe@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.163816.0100.>

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001, Douglas G Kilday wrote:

> I still think *pempwe is a better fit for Early PIE. Otherwise the Germanic
> forms require an ad-hoc assimilation of *p__kw__ to *p__p__ mirroring the
> Italo-Celtic assimilation to *kw__kw__. But if this happened, why wasn't
> *perkw- affected (Lat. quercus, OE fyrh, OHG forha)? We don't have
> *firf-trees.

> Is there any objection to *-kwe coming from *-pwe? Does this enclitic appear
> in Hittite?

Hitt. has (at least) kuis-ki 'every' = Lat. quis-que, cf. Luvian kuis-ha
(-ha 'and'; also Lycian tise : se 'and'). Whatever the full history, the
protoform must have contained a velar element in the enclitic part.

The story of Germanic *fimf is different from *pen{kw}e > Italo-Celtic
*{kw}en{kw}e and *pe{kw}- > *{kw}e{kw}-. The Germanic event is restricted
to the one word 'five' which of course follows 'four' in counting, this
giving the array *xw-{th}w--f-xw in which the xw's changed to f, no doubt
by assimilation, given the nature of [f] as something very close to a
"rounded thorn".

Jens


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan 25 16:11:07 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 10:11:07 -0600
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.101107.0600.>

> I still think *pempwe is a better fit for Early PIE. Otherwise the Germanic
> forms require an ad-hoc assimilation of *p__kw__ to *p__p__ mirroring the
> Italo-Celtic assimilation to *kw__kw__. But if this happened, why wasn't
> *perkw- affected (Lat. quercus, OE fyrh, OHG forha)? We don't have
> *firf-trees.

        What about Greek /pente/ and Sanskrit /panca/, which do indeed seem
to contain  the respective reflexes of PIE /que/ (more or less) meaning
'and'?
        As for the non-existence of "firf" trees, all I can suggest is that
numbers are sometimes subject to processes (mostly analogical) that do not
affect ordinary words.  In this case, the "sing-song" rhythm of counting may
have encouraged something not unlike reduplication (or internal
alliteration).   (/ini, mini, maini, mo/).

Dr. David L. White


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu Jan 25 17:42:52 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 18:42:52 +0100
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
In-Reply-To: <F110M9JkaELLdpXshN400000efe@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.184252.0100.>

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001 20:04:06 -0000, "Douglas G Kilday"
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

>I still think *pempwe is a better fit for Early PIE. Otherwise the Germanic
>forms require an ad-hoc assimilation of *p__kw__ to *p__p__ mirroring the
>Italo-Celtic assimilation to *kw__kw__. But if this happened, why wasn't
>*perkw- affected (Lat. quercus, OE fyrh, OHG forha)? We don't have
>*firf-trees.

>Is there any objection to *-kwe coming from *-pwe? Does this enclitic appear
>in Hittite?

If we assume, as is reasonable, that it's the same suffix: Hitt.
kuiski "whosoever", Goth. hwaz-uh/hwo:-h/hwa-h, Lat. quisque.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 25 18:23:02 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 19:23:02 +0100
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.192302.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Douglas G Kilday" <acnasvers at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2001 9:04 PM

> Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (10 Jan 2001) wrote:

>> [DGK]
>>> I would add the tail-end of "five"; Goth. <fimf> suggests Early PIE
>>> *pempwe.

>> [MCV]
>> It would be a candidate, were it not that I rather like the idea of *pen-kwe
>> "...and five" (an etymology similar to that of "ampersand").

> [DGK]

> If the second syllable is indeed the enclitic 'and', the first syllable is
> more likely in my opinion to be 'one', with a "full hand" of four (*oktom?)
> understood.

[Ed]
Why not 'and [a] thumb'?

> I still think *pempwe is a better fit for Early PIE. Otherwise the Germanic
> forms require an ad-hoc assimilation of *p__kw__ to *p__p__ mirroring the
> Italo-Celtic assimilation to *kw__kw__. But if this happened, why wasn't
> *perkw- affected (Lat. quercus, OE fyrh, OHG forha)? We don't have
> *firf-trees.

[Ed]
In P-Italic you have p_p_('pompe'). On the other hand, not all Germanic has
f_f_: Swedish 'femt', mirroring Greek 'pente' (NGr. 'pende'), where t < *kw. As
a non-specialist, I'm really confused. Help!

Ed Selleslagh


From cjustus at mail.utexas.edu  Sat Jan 27 13:54:31 2001
From: cjustus at mail.utexas.edu (Carol F. Justus)
Date: Sat, 27 Jan 2001 07:54:31 -0600
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
In-Reply-To: <F110M9JkaELLdpXshN400000efe@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <SAT.27.JAN.2001.075431.0600.>

[ moderator snip ]

>Is there any objection to *-kwe coming from *-pwe? Does this enclitic appear
>in Hittite?

*-kwe appears in Hittite as the suffix  -ku ... -ku   'whether ... or'.

Carol Justus


From hwhatting at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 30 12:03:16 2001
From: hwhatting at hotmail.com (Hans-Werner Hatting)
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 13:03:16 +0100
Subject: *gwh in Gmc.
Message-ID: <TUE.30.JAN.2001.130316.0100.>

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001 20:04:06 -0000 Douglas G Kilday wrote:

>I still think *pempwe is a better fit for Early PIE. Otherwise the Germanic
>forms require an ad-hoc assimilation of *p__kw__ to *p__p__ mirroring the
>Italo-Celtic assimilation to *kw__kw__. But if this happened, why wasn't
>*perkw- affected (Lat. quercus, OE fyrh, OHG forha)? We don't have
>*firf-trees.

>From the reflexes in IE languages I can remember offhand, Indo-Iranian,
Greek, q-Italic, and q-Celtic require a PIE */kw/. Of course, one can
operate with different stages of PIE to account for irregularities, to unite
forms which seem to belong together, or to establish links to other language
families. But in the case of "5", we do not really need a Pre-PIE */pw/. To
me, the assimilation theory looks satisfyingly convincing, and we have the
correspondent assimilation (only the other way round) in Latin and q-Celtic.
And assimilations are often singular items, not being consequently applied
to all the material in a language.

Anyway, the proposed sound change **/pw/ > */kw/ looks unusual to me. We
have a lot of /kw/ > /p/ in IE languages, but does anybody know of instances
(except assimilation) for the change proposed by Douglas Kilday?
A further argument for an old /kw/ is the nasal. By PIE phonological rules,
we would expect /m/ before /p/. But the Gmc. languages have mostly the
reflexes of /n/, which is possible before labiovelars like /kw/ (probably
being realised as (ng)), but not before true labials. Later occurences of
/m/ in Gmc. languages can be easily explained as assimilations.

DGK:
>Is there any objection to *-kwe coming from *-pwe?

If You don4t accept Gmc. /f/ out of */kw/, but retract all instances of it
to a */pw/, You cannot link the second element of "5" with the eclitic PIE
*-kwe, as it is conserved in Gmc. as Gothic _-uh_, so it should contain PIE
/kw/ even in Your model.

For my part, I think it4s simpler to assume that the reflexes of PIE /kw/
occasionally merged with those of /p/ in some stage of Proto-Gmc.
under the influence of labial consonants in the same word.

Best regards,
Hans-Werner Hatting


From dlwhite at texas.net  Thu Jan 25 17:34:55 2001
From: dlwhite at texas.net (David L. White)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 11:34:55 -0600
Subject: Etruscans
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.113455.0600.>

 The argument that the Lemnians were from Etruria is convincing only if we
disregard one principle and three facts.  The principle is that shared
archaisms are not indicative of close connection.  To make it clear why this is
so, let us imagine that we have three groups, A-B-C, arrayed in approximately
that geographic order.  If group B then innovates away from groups A and C,
leaving these with (relatively) archaic features in common, then failure to
recognize the validity of the principle just given will result in the belief
that A and C share some close connection, when they do not.  I cannot resist
(re-)noting that the principle applies to living things as much as to languages
(and alphabets).  For example, recent opinion inclines toward the view that the
stripes of zebras are an archaism, that at some point in the past all equids
had stripes.  If this is so, then zebras (there are at least three species) do
not form a sub-group within equids, and are not to be connected with each
other.  The principle is therefore valid in a manner that might be called
"modality independent".

 The three facts are that 1) the use of a zig-zag sibilant, 2) the use of
"H" as a fricative, and 3) the use of vau (or anything) for /w/ are all
archaisms.  (The use of a psi-shaped sign for "chi" may well be too, I don't
know.)  The use of a zig-zag sign for a sibilant (apparently /ts/) appears
also in Mantinean, where to my knowledge nobody connects it with influence
from Italy, or even Euboea.  It is simply an archaism, due largely to
Mantinea's somewhat isolated position in the interior of the Peloponessus.
The innovations noted were all characteristic of what might be called Aegean
Greek, and there is no reason to think that they should have made it across
the language boundary into Lemnian, anymore than that they should have made
it into Italian Greek or Mantinean.   They are also too late to have much to
do with a posited migration from the Aegean (or its eastern coast) to Italy.
The Phrygians and the Trojans (or their displaced descendants) belong to
significantly different periods of NW Anatolian history, and there is little
reason to think that their alphabets would have showed any especially close
relation.  In any event, as MCV notes, the attempt to argue that because the
alphabet is Euboean it must be Italian is more than a little strained to
begin with.

 Furthermore, the view presented totally ignores the presence of the
Turshas, who seem to bear the same name as the Tursenoi, raiding in the Nile
Delta (and perhaps under the name Philistines similarly distresing the
Hebrews) during the Aegean Dark Ages, roughly 1200-800.  I have not exactly
memorized Egyptian historical records, but I think they rule out the
possibility that the Turshas were the descendants of Italian colonizers of
Lemnos about 600, and it is scarcely likely that true Tuscans were raiding
the Eastern Mediterranean at any period.  Under the view presented, the time
and place of the Turshas do not match up, for if one is right the other is
wrong, so that we are left with little alternative but to deny that there is
any connection between the names.

 The seemingly Italian features in Lemnian could be due, as MCV suggests, to
independent influences.  The change of /pt/ to /ft/ is fairly natural (is is
known from Icelandic) and could have occurred in virtually any IE language.
Likewise feminine /i/ is known from both Greek and Sanskrit, and so is
hardly a reliable indicator of Italian provenance.  Nonetheless, I would
guess that in this case the things noted are borrowing from Italian Etruscan
into Lemnian, due to continuned contact between colonies and "mother-city"
of a sort well-attested from this period. The Greek colonies generally made
a point of keeping in contact with their mother cities, and so did Carthage.
There is no reason to think that Lemnian (or "Turshan") colonies in Italy
would not have done the same.  In other words, just as with modern British
and American English, it is not necessarily the case that true separation
has occurred, and borrowings might well have jumped the gap.  It is a little
odd that a word for grandson/nephew should be one of them, since this would
appear to be a semi-basic kinship term, but there is no denying that English
borrowed its version of the word in question from French, so however strange
it may seem, such borowing has been known to happen.   And a change of /ft/
to /fot/ (if /f/ is what "ph" means) would not be that strange:  for vowels
to be inserted into sequences regarded as difficult, taking on the color (in
this case labial) of an adjacent consonant is fairly normal.

 But I return to the names.  If the original name was /trosha/ or /trusha/
(in a language that did not distinguish /u/ and /o/ there is no meaningful
distinction), then we might expect some difference of opinion about 1) what
to do with the /r/ in languages that did not permit /tr/, 2)  whether to
borrow with /o/ or /u/, and 2) how to render /sh/ in languages that did not
have /sh/.   Among the options for the first might be 1) to metathsize
(Tursha, Tursenoi (from Egyptian?)), to delete (Tuscan), or to prefix
(Etruscan, Etruria).  Among the options for the last might be 1) /sk/
(Etruscan, Tuscan), 2 /si/ (Etruria, Troia (with later loss of /s/), and 3)
/s/ (Tursenoi).   All these are variants of the same name.   To split off
"Tursha" and "Troia" from the rest is unwarranted.  They fit in as well as
any of the others, which are universally acknowledged to represent variants
of the same name.

 Nor is it necessarily naive to imagine that the legends in question, like
Icelandic sagas, medieval Saints' Lives, or for that matter the Homeric
epics, might well have a considerable element of truth in them, without
being wholly true.  It would be nice to imagine that such works could either
be regarded as wholly reliable or wholly unreliable, nice but also
simplistic.  The legends are evidence, just of an annoyingly equivocal sort.
 It should be noted as well that much of Herodotus is technically in
indirect discourse.  No particular disbelief is necessarily implied by any
given instance.

Dr. David L. White


From mcv at wxs.nl  Fri Jan 26 15:07:33 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 16:07:33 +0100
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
In-Reply-To: <n1496t818isr7qsk1csdb3gqqhfv43bfp8@4ax.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.26.JAN.2001.160733.0100.>

On Tue, 16 Jan 2001 20:30:05 +0100, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
<mcv at wxs.nl> wrote:

>I'm personally convinced that the name of the deceased is "S'ivai", as
>the central message of the stele seems to be (repeated twice: in the
>front center, and on the side):  S'ivai evistho S'eronaith sialchveis'
>avis' maras'm av[is' ais'] / S'ivai avis' sialchvis' maras'm avis'
>aomai  [approxiamtely: "Sivai, "evistho" in Seruna, of years 60[?]
>and[?] 5[?] years died[?]"].

One further thought: if we link the words <toverona[rom]> and
<tavarsio> on the stele to Etruscan <tevarath> "referee, judge", a
plausible hypothesis would be that the deceased's function (performed
"for Holaie the Phokaian", whose "naphoth" he was, in a place called
"Serona") would have something to do with the administration of
justice (despite the spear and shield(?) with which he is depicted).
Now <(h)isto:r> (*wid-tor-) is (Homeric) Greek for "judge", but I
wonder if there is an attestation in Ancient Greek of a magistrature
*<eu-(h)isto:r>, as this would fit very well with Lemnian <evistho>
(the -r may have been weak in the Greek source dialect, or dispensed
with in Lemnian if the plural suffix in that language was -r, as it is
in Etruscan).

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Sun Jan 28 04:47:56 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 04:47:56 -0000
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <SUN.28.JAN.2001.044756.0000.>

Steve Gustafson (15 Jan 2001) wrote:

>But my understanding is that the business of the reconstruction of the IE
>noun case system reveals a number of both stillborn and fossil cases that,
>had they been generalised, would have added to the number of cases
>recoverable.  Moreover, my recollection is that the existence of languages
>with otherwise conservative morphology, like Greek, Gothic, and Hittite,
>that never seem to have had the full complement of Sanskrit cases, and the
>strongly different system that prevails in the Tocharian languages, has led
>some to suggest that the PIE cases may have been added to, rather than
>subtracted from.

Yes, Tocharian shows that (Early) PIE must have had a rich variety of
morphemes capable of forming case-suffixes and verbal endings.

>The Sanskrit, Celtic, and Latin cases that are formed in the plural on *-bh-
>seem to be elaborations on a common suffix, at least somewhat comparable to
>the Etruscan cases.  Germanic and Slavic apparently used a different suffix,
>*-m-, and Slavic may have worked it the same way.  This suggests to me, that
>the PIE cases may once have had agglutinative features, and that we can still
>see part of the process by which they were built up.

This is certainly reasonable; some of the suffixes look like composites. The
real puzzle is why PIE (or its descendents) should have abandoned
agglutinative morphology in favor of a mixed bag of suffixes, apparently
discarding perfectly good composites. Do any Uralists have examples of
agglutinative languages moving toward "fusional" case-morphology? Or perhaps
PIE was never fully agglutinative, the process of establishing composite
suffixes as case-markers being interrupted before completion?

>Moreover, the *bh- suffix has been fossilized in Greek words like -thyrephi-,
>"outside."  This was once a productive instrumental style case in Greek, as
>revealed in Mycenean ko-ru-pi, "with helmets," and po-ni-ki-pi, "using purple
>dye."

This suffix was still productive in Epic Greek; e.g. <hippoisin kai
ochesphin> 'with horses and chariots' (Hom. Od. IV.533).

>I may be a certifiable kook [and I cheerfully confess, no more than an
>interested amateur], but it seems that the Etruscan noun morphology --- though
>it has obviously been substantially reshaped --- does not rule out that there
>may be a common ancestor between PIE and Etruscan.  I would not speculate that
>Etruscan is a direct descendant of PIE.  Etruscan strikes me as interesting,
>in that it seems a logical place to -test- theories about super-families.

What I mean by "certifiable kooks" are those who derive Etruscan from
Hebrew, Serbian, Ukrainian, Turkish, etc. on the basis of arbitrary and
capricious impressionism. Serious comparative work requires systematic
tables of sound-correspondences. Kooks have no comprehension of seriousness
and their theories turn sound-change into a haphazard chaos which, as we
know from IE studies, does not reflect reality.

Wherever the Etruscans may have been between (say) 2500 BCE and 700, when
their inscriptions started, it is likely that they were never very far from
communities of IE-speakers. Etruscan words that look like IE may have been
borrowed from IE. This is why I say that a "deeper knowledge" of the
Etruscan vocabulary is required. In order to set up sound-tables between PIE
and Proto-Tyrrhenian, we need a set of words which we reasonably believe to
be "native" Etruscan, so that we are not just comparing PIE sounds with
their own reflexes in borrowed form.

I think that not only Etruscan but also pre-IE substrates must be taken into
account when attempting to construct super-families which include IE.
Neglecting these lesser-known languages amounts to (pardon the expression)
not playing with a full deck.

DGK


From acnasvers at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 30 20:55:32 2001
From: acnasvers at hotmail.com (Douglas G Kilday)
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 20:55:32 -0000
Subject: Etruscans (was: minimal pairs)
Message-ID: <TUE.30.JAN.2001.205532.0000.>

Miguel Carrasquer Vidal (16 Jan 2001) wrote:

[snip of DGK's material on Lemnian alphabet]

>But Lemnos is only 50km or so off the Chalcidian coast.  It is
>definitely not an Ionian, Aeolic or Cycladic island.  In fact, the
>surprising thing would be if the alphabet did *not* belong to the
>Euboico-Chalcidian family.

Lemnos is about the same distance from the Troad, so the Phrygian alphabet
would not be surprising here. In fact, if the Lemno-Tyrrhenians were the
relic of a great migration from Anatolia (which I have been arguing against)
it would be surprising if they had severed all ties with their homeland and
gone in the other direction to get an alphabet.

I now think the Lemno-Tyrrhenians were probably the offshoot of a Tyrrhenian
community living in Acte, the easternmost peninsula of Chalcidice, along
with other non-Hellenes (Thuc. IV.109). Despite de Simone's doubts, I find
it most plausible that they acquired the alphabet in Chalcidice (or perhaps
Euboea), not in Italy. To my knowledge, no Etruscan inscriptions found in
Italy use the peculiar conventions of the Lemnian alphabet (O instead of U,
L with upper stroke, treatment of sibilants).

>Larissa Bonfante says the word [nefts] was borrowed in Etruscan from Latin,
>and in fact it might have been borrowed from any Indo-European
>language having a reflex of *nepot-, including Greek (Homeric
><nepodes>) or even Carian (<nchoth> or <nphoth> "child", if I can
>trust Woudhuizen's sources [Meriggi]).  So this word is rather
>inconclusive, except that it's obviously easier to go from <naphoth>
>to <nefts> than the other way around.

Good point. I can't prove that <naphoth> was picked up in Italy. Given the
proximity of other IE languages from which it might have been borrowed, I
must admit its presence on the stele is inconclusive.

>> The stele also contains <aker tavars'io vanalasial>, evidently the name of
>> the honored/deceased in regular Etruscan form: Aker = praenomen, Tavars'io
>> = gentilicium, Vanalasial = metronymic.

>The two lines are usually read: "vanalasial s'eronai morinail / aker
>tavars'io" (I'm sure there's a reason for reading "vanalasial", but on
>every copy I've seen, what I read is: "va.m.ala.sial:
>s'eronaimorinail").  There is no compelling reason not to accept your
>alternative reading "Aker Tavars'io / Vanalasial S'eronai Morinail",
>but if the first 3 words are the name of the deceased, what is the
>meaning of <s'eronaimorinail>, apparently the genitive of "in Seruna,
>in Murina"?

My reading of these two lines follows Ribezzo and Buffa. The reverse order
is the "lectio difficilior". Looking at the crude copy in my possession, I
see that <tavars'io> is compressed with respect to <aker> in order to fit
between the latter and the horizontal <s'ivai>. It is clear that
<maras'...s'ivai> was written before the vertical inscriptions, and that the
writer considered top-to-bottom (from his viewpoint) the normal order for
lines of text. (The vertical inscriptions, both <aker> etc. and <holaie>
etc., show that the writer regarded right-to-left as the default direction,
so <s'ivai> cannot start the horizontal inscription and must end it.) Had
<vanalasial> been written first, it is unlikely that the writer would have
stopped with <morinail> and taken the chance on running out of room with
<aker tavars'io> in a closed space.

On my crude copy, the third letter of <vanalasial> exhibits a slight
extension which might, but probably shouldn't, be interpreted as an
additional stroke making it into M. Most authors who have seen the stele
concur on reading N (for me, of course, "autopsia" is out of the question).
As for the apparent interpuncts within words Pauli, in the first edition of
the inscription (1886), did not regard them as functional. Lejeune (1957)
thought they represented the syllabic punctuation characteristic of South
Etrurian and Campanian inscriptions in the VI cent. BCE and argued for an
interdependence between Etrurian and Lemnian writing systems. However, the
points visible on my copy, particularly within <vanalasial>, do not agree
well with true syllabic punctuation, in which the points usually follow the
first letter of a word (especially a vowel), divide two consonants within a
word, or follow the whole word. They are best attributed here to the
porosity of the stone.

I don't *know* the meaning of <s'eronaimorinail>, but if <aker> etc. is read
as a man's name in PN-GN-MN format, what follows probably indicates his
locality. We agree that <s'eronaith> is probably a locative and <morinail>
probably refers to the Lemnian town of Murina. <S'eronai> is plausibly a
proximate use of the comitative (cf. Rec. Etr. murce Capue 'served near
Capua'). <Morinail> might stand for the genitive *morinaial. The meaning
could be something like 'near S'eruna of Murina' = 'born near S'eruna which
is in the district, or under the jurisdiction, of Murina'.

>I'm personally convinced that the name of the deceased is "S'ivai", as
>the central message of the stele seems to be (repeated twice: in the
>front center, and on the side):  S'ivai evistho S'eronaith sialchveis'
>avis' maras'm av[is' ais'] / S'ivai avis' sialchvis' maras'm avis'
>aomai  [approxiamtely: "Sivai, "evistho" in Seruna, of years 60[?]
>and[?] 5[?] years died[?]"].

I'm inclined to regard <s'ivai> as cognate to Etr. <zivas>, as several
authors have suggested. <Zivas> has been controversial for over a century.
Bugge, who considered Etruscan to be IE (closest to Armenian), rendered it
'lebend' on the basis of resemblance to <vivus>, <quick>, etc. Cortsen
scoffed at this and countered with 'tot'. Pallottino regarded <zivas> as
gen. pl. 'dei morti'. IMHO <zivas> is most likely the gen. sg. of an
abstract noun *ziva meaning 'sepulture, burial, funeral' or the like, or the
honor of the funerary ritual. If so, Lemn. <s'ivai> is probably an
instrumental (or similar) use of the comitative meaning something like 'with
interment', 'with a funeral', perhaps 'with honor'.

>On the other hand, Lemnian shows little or no trace of the ubiquitous
>Etruscan 3rd.p. preterit ending -ce (there is <phoke>, but in view of
><Holaies'i Phokiasiale>, one can doubt whether this is a verb or a
>reference to Phocaea), and it is in fact impossible to recognize any
>verbal form in Lemnian (maybe -io ?).

Ubiquitous? Where do you find the suffix -ce on the Cippus Perusinus? (Okay,
unfair question, the CP isn't a funerary monument.) I doubt that <phoke>
refers to Phocaea, as *Phokia would have constituted a single morpheme for
the Lemnians. Had they borrowed the Greek word for 'seal', it is unlikely
they would have used it in a solemn funerary inscription. I think <phoke> is
most likely a preterit, though I can't prove it.

> The gap between <naphoth> and
><nefts> has already been commented on.  Neither <z> nor <f> occur in
>this short fragment (and how would Lemnian have rendered <f>?), and
>Etr. <u> (no <o>) is Lemnian <o> (no <u>) [this might merely be an
>orthographic issue, in view of Morina=Murina].

The letter <z> is found elsewhere on Lemnos, at Kabirion in the fragmentary
inscription <zari...>. If <s'ivai> is indeed cognate with Etr. <zivas>, it
indicates that the convention at Kaminia was to hypodifferentiate the
sibilants, using the zigzag which we choose to write <s'> for both phonemes
written <s'> and <z> in standard North Etr. orthography. Not having the sign
8 (transcribed <f>), the Lemnians might have used the digraphs FH or HF
(transcribed <vh>, <hv>) as in Etruscan of the VII cent. BCE, or they might
have used phi (again hypodifferentiating, as later Greeks did with Latin
<f>). The phoneme <f>, however written, is not common in Archaic Etruscan
and its absence from known Lemnian texts is not surprising. If /o/ and /u/
are not phonemically distinct, their representation is initially a matter of
taste, subsequently one of custom. These are all orthographic issues. What
they indicate is that the Lemno-Tyrrhenians acquired the alphabet
independently of their relatives in Etruria. No sweeping conclusions about
phonologic divergence should be attempted.

> Lemnian <mara> in the
>formula <sialchvis' avis' maras'm avis'> must surely be a numeral, but
>fits none of the Etruscan ones (the only one that comes even remotely
>close is <mach> "5", a little bit closer [but still remote] if we
>consider the derivative <muvalch> "50", showing that the -ch was not
>part of the root, but probably identical to -c(h) "and" [cf. PIE
>*pen-kwe "... and 5"], so something like *mawa-k(h) "[... and ]5",
>*mawa-alkh "50").

Surely a numeral? Surely non-numeric terms can stand next to words for
'year'! I'm personally skeptical about <muvalch> being derived from <mach>.
Rix has suggested *machvalch <- *machv (the <v> is superscript indicating
labialization), but the process *uv <- *achv is otherwise unrecognized in
Etruscan, hence completely "ad hoc". <Mach> and <muvalch> are probably from
distinct roots; likewise <zal> 'two' and <zathrum> 'twenty'.

> In sum, I see little reason to think that Lemnian
>differs only trivially from Etruscan, despite the fact that it is
>clearly related to it.

Whoa! I didn't intend by the term "dialect" to imply that the differences
between Lemnian and mainland Archaic Etruscan should be dismissed as
"trivial". The Lemnian stele fills in some of our knowledge of Archaic
Etruscan, for example by providing the Archaic form of the decile suffix,
which is unattested in Italy. From the comparative standpoint Lemnian is an
*effective* dialect of Archaic Etruscan, whatever its *functional* status
might have been in terms of mutual intelligibility with the Etrurians.

My argument that the Lemno-Tyrrhenians came from Italy stands or falls with
the interpretation of <aker tavars'io vanalasial>. If this is indeed a name
in PN-GN-MN format, its only reasonable origin is west-central Italy. If
these words mean something else, I would argue that the probable source of
these Tyrrhenians was the upper Adriatic region. By far the most plausible
hypothesis IMHO has the Etruscans entering Italy by the NE land-route. I
repeat my contention that sea-migration from Anatolia has no solid evidence
behind it.

DGK


From JoatSimeon at aol.com  Thu Jan 25 20:00:59 2001
From: JoatSimeon at aol.com (JoatSimeon at aol.com)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 15:00:59 EST
Subject: Greek Gods
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.150059.EST.>

In a message dated 1/25/01 1:54:41 AM Mountain Standard Time,
dlwhite at texas.net writes:

> more

>         Sorry.  The statement I was thinking of referred only to the major
> (12?) gods of the pantheon.
>

-- the JIES gave a PIE derivation for Hera some time ago, and for Hercules.
Something to do with *iera, if my memory serves me correctly.


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Jan 25 20:23:47 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 15:23:47 -0500
Subject: Pre-PIE as a PIE substrate?
In-Reply-To: <200101251156.FAA04029@sunmuw1.MUW.Edu>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.152347.0500.>

I've come across references to

<seal> (the animal) < OE seolh < Germanic *selhaz < ? Finnic
	(and I think maybe also <selkie>, the Scottish sea critter)
and
<oar> < *airo < ? Finnic

Maybe Ante can give us a Uralic opinion on these

>Please where can I find a complete list of these words which are found in
>both Germanic and western Uralic?
[snip]

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


From anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi  Fri Jan 26 08:08:52 2001
From: anaikio at mail.student.oulu.fi (Ante Aikio)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 10:08:52 +0200
Subject: Pre-PIE as a PIE substrate?
In-Reply-To: <200101251216.OAA5082949@paju.oulu.fi>
Message-ID: <FRI.26.JAN.2001.100852.0200.>

[I wrote]
>>However, there are lexical correspondences between western Uralic and
>>Germanic which have no further etymologies in either language family[.]

[Anthony Appleyard]
>Please where can I find a complete list of these words which are found in
>both Germanic and western Uralic?

Regrettably, nowhere. If you're interested in this, you must compile it
yourself. You could e.g. start with going through the material in "Lexikon
der ?lteren germanischen Lehnw?rter in den ostseefinnischen Sprachen" by
A.D. Kylstra et al, 1991-. But this dictionary does not present the
etymologies of the Germanic loan originals, so you would need to check
them in other sources. Moreover, only the first two volumes have been
published so far, so only Finnish words from A to O are included. The rest
could be checked in e.g. the new etymological dictionary "Suomen sanojen
alkuper?" ('The origin of Finnish words'); however, the dictionary is in
Finnish, so you have to know some Finnish in order to effectively use it.
However, SSA does not include all the Germanic loan words, as its attitude
towards loan etymologies seems to be a bit overcritical in general.

However, an excellent book on the research of Germanic loan words in
Finnic is Jorma Koivulehto's book "Verba Mutuata" (M?moires de la Soci?t?
Finno-Ougrienne #237) The book is in German and it contains 16 articles
(some 450 pages in total) by him, dealing with IE-U contacts and focusing
mostly on Finnic and Germanic. I can recommend this as the best
introduction on the topic.

>Someone said in gothic-l at egroups.com that archaeologies ancestral to the
>modern South Saami (= Lappish) culture have been found in all of Scandinavia
>dand as far south as Hamburg in Germany. If so, then perhaps in South Saamic
>we have a living descendant of one of the many aboriginal substratum
>languages that incoming Indo-European overrode so long ago, and the above
>words and their like are pre-IE substratum words. If Finno-Ugrian languages
>were once spoken in all Scandinavia and Denmark and a long way into
>Schleswig-Holstein, then their speakers in those southern areas would have
>changed from tundra hunters to a denser population and more settled mode of
>life as the climate got warmer as the Ice Age ended and then farming and
>livestock herding came in.

Actually, the most coherent theory explains the Sami as Iron Age newcomers
in the north and Scandinavia that spread from Southern / Mid-Finland and
Carelia. This theory is supported by both archeological and linguistic
evidence. And even though some scholars (notably Pekka Sammallahti)
maintain that a Uralic language ancestral to Samic was spoken in
Mid-Scandinavia, Northern Finland, and the Kola Peninsula already in the
stone age, there is no evidence pointing to an earlier "Samic"
inhabitation in Southern Scandinavia, let alone Denmark. But instead,
there is overwhelming evidence (e.g. substrate toponyms borrowed into
Finnic from Samic) for the view that the Samic "original home" stretched
in the Bronze Age from inland Southern Finland to the east, at least to
Lake Ladoga and Onega (the exact northern eastern borders have not been
determined, as no one has done any systematic research on this; however,
there seem to be several very Samic-looking toponyms even east of Onega).

Moreover, the ideas you refer to above seem to be linguistically
anachronistic in the sense that it does not make sense to speak of "Samic"
(let alone "South Sami", which is one of the ten Sami languages which
quite recently diverged from Proto-Samic) on these time levels (the end of
the Ice Age). Actually, even Proto-Uralic must be dated later, and it is
quite certain that by the end of the Ice Age there were no Uralians
anywhere in the vicinity of the Baltic Sea. Some researchers (e.g.
Dolukhanov, Wiik, Nu?ez) have proposed quite different scenarios, but
these have been rejected by the majority of Uralists, as criticism has
pointed out fatal flaws in the thoery.

>That increases the chance that Germanic started
>as Indo-European spoken with a "south coast of the Baltic" type Finno-Ugrian
>accent.

E.g. Kalevi Wiik has proposed several Uralic substrate features in
Germanic, but his theory is very unconvincing; for criticism see e.g.
Petri Kallio: "Uralic Substrate Features in Germanic?", Journal de la
Soc?t? Finno-Ougrienne 87.

>That might also explain peculiar Germanic features such as weak-type
>adjectives declining different from 1st and 2nd declension nouns.

Could you elaborate, as my knowledge of Proto-Germanic is quite
superficial?

>Perhaps also, Balto-Slavonic (Lithuanian etc) started as IE spoken with a
>"south-east coast of the Baltic" Finno-Ugrian accent; Estonian and Livonian
>would be the nearest living relatives of that area's pre-IE substratum.

The case for a Uralic substrate in Proto-Slavic is much stronger, but the
evidence cannot be (at least as yet) concidered compelling.

Regards,
Ante Aikio


From hwhatting at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 30 08:40:09 2001
From: hwhatting at hotmail.com (Hans-Werner Hatting)
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 09:40:09 +0100
Subject: words specific to Saamic / Finnish and Germanic
Message-ID: <TUE.30.JAN.2001.094009.0100.>

On Tue, 23 Jan 2001 08:37:37 GMT Anthony Appleyard wrote:
>English "ship", Germanic "skip-", seems to have a relative in Greek:
>{skaphos}. Also, Greek {skapto:} = "I dig"; the connection is likely via
>dugout canoes (made by hollowing out a big single log).

The Gmc. cognates of these Greek words come most likely from the family of
Engl. _shave_, German _schaben_ (Gk. /ph/ < PIE /bh/,/gwh/). If Gmc. _skip_
had a cognate in Greek, it ought to be along the lines of
*sk(e/o)ib- . As _skip_ is one of the candidates for a loan from a substrate
in Gmc., which is made more likely by the fact that PIE /b/ was very rare,
so any Gmc. word with /p/ is suspect of being a loan from another (IE or
non-IE language). For an IE substrate, we could accept a connection to
_skapto:_.

As I see this problem, it would be good if we were able to reconstruct one
substrate or at least a sufficiently small number of substrate layers, with
clear rules for their phonological relationship with PIE (or some other
European language family). Otherwise we risk inventing a substrate for every
word in Gmc. which cannot be accounted by with the normal sound changes from
PIE, but which has a PIE feel about it. In a variation of an old rule -
substrata non sunt multiplicanda.

Best regards,
H. W. Hatting


From hwhatting at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 30 07:29:55 2001
From: hwhatting at hotmail.com (Hans-Werner Hatting)
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 08:29:55 +0100
Subject: Goths
Message-ID: <TUE.30.JAN.2001.082955.0100.>

On Mon, 15 Jan 2001 21:19:21 -0600, David White wrote:

>Harking back to an earlier emissive, I would like to know more about
>how the name of the Goths is supposed to have been from two different >
>agentnouns, each from a different ablaut grade.
>        It would also be good to know how the /o/ got there in Latin.  >
>One possibility is that the name (as it reached Latin) is indeed an
>"other-name" from other Germanic, in which case /o/ rather than /u/ in a
>past-participle of /geutan/ (more or less) would in fact be regular.  Or,
>to put it perhaps more clearly, the from with /o/ would be the non-Gothic
>Germanic, whereas the form with /u/ would be the Gothic version.  That the
>Greeks were in contact with the Goths whereas the Romans were in contact
>with other Germanic tribes might explain this difference, which as far as I
>can see has no other explanation.

Just a suggestion:
We could have an o-Stem *gauta- (with o-grade of the root, a type widely
attested for PIE and Gmc.),denoting the tribe, and an idividualising derived
n-stem *guton-, denoting the members of the tribe.

I would not worry much about Latin /o/ for Gmc. /u/, as at that time short
/u/ and /o/ probably already had merged in Vulgar Latin.

Best regards,
H. W. Hatting


From evenstar at mail.utexas.edu  Fri Jan 26 00:59:24 2001
From: evenstar at mail.utexas.edu (Shilpi Misty Bhadra)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 18:59:24 -0600
Subject: Calcutta/Kolkatta
In-Reply-To: <E14IsMZ-0007CP-00@nautilus.shore.net>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.185924.0600.>

[ moderator snip ]

Dear Rohan,

That was an excellent commentary on Kolkata. I have seen it written both
Kolkatta and Kolkata (already), so that made it confusing. The fundamental
problem is transcription of the language to Roman letters/sounds. Of course
there are political issues. In Budapest, after the Hungarians got rid of
communism and Soviet influence, they renamed every street that had a
Russian name to a Hungarian one. I have been told by many a Hungarian that
the older generation spoke and knew Russian, but most refuse to speak
Russian now. They will speak in Hungarian or German. The Shik pronunciation
is news to me. But then again, I don't know that many Bengalis and more of
them say it than I know. No one (Brits, Bengalis, etc.)can pronounce every
phoneme or sound in the world perfectly, and I fully understand that. That
is why studying loanwords and how different cultures transliterate words is
interesting. I hope I didn't offend anyone. I myself cannot do the -dn-
cluster in Dnieper among many other sounds. I think that regardless of the
name change, most people will pronounce or mispronounce the names. I think
if people have been using a name for many years, most people will continue
using that name out of habit, and the real generation that it will affect
are those learning the language or word for the first time or early in
their life (i.e. children). I apologize for my lack of knowledge. You
handled the question much better. And you are right, it was better for the
Indo-Iranian or Indology list.

Shilpi Misty Bhadra
University of Texas at Austin
Ancient History, Classics, and Humanities (focus: Indo-European Studies)
senior undergraduate
evenstar at mail.utexas.edu
512-320-0229 (ph)
512-476-3367 (fax)


From maxdashu at LanMinds.Com  Thu Jan 25 21:21:37 2001
From: maxdashu at LanMinds.Com (Max Dashu)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 13:21:37 -0800
Subject: la leche
In-Reply-To: <3A6380CE.39C23231@memphis.edu>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.132137.0800.>

>>> Why shouldn't a product of the female breast become feminine?

>> If anything, it's the masculine forms that need explaining.

What, then, are we to make of a feminine form for "penis" in Greek (i psoli)?

Max Dashu


From r.piva at swissonline.ch  Thu Jan 25 22:45:32 2001
From: r.piva at swissonline.ch (Renato Piva)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 23:45:32 +0100
Subject: la leche (was: Re: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro..)..
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.234532.0100.>

>> Leo Connolly wrote:

> But my Latin dictionary (an old Cassell's from the 1930s) lists only _lac_,
> not _lacte_.  Still, it is conceivable that _lacte_ arose in Vulgar Latin,
> and it would be a perfectly good ancestor of _leche_ et al.

In Petron's Satyricon (1st AD), Trimalchio, the rich libertus from Asia Minor
who, being a foreigner, speaks a vulgar variety of Latin (with many 'errors' as
compared to classical Latin), says 'bonum lactem' (I can't tell where exactly,
as I have no text at hand, but I'm sure it's there).

R. Piva


From g_sandi at hotmail.com  Fri Jan 26 14:24:54 2001
From: g_sandi at hotmail.com (Gabor Sandi)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 14:24:54 -0000
Subject: la leche (was: Re: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro..)..
Message-ID: <FRI.26.JAN.2001.142454.0000.>

>From: "Leo A. Connolly" <connolly at memphis.edu>
>Date: Mon, 15 Jan 2001 22:59:27 +0000

[ moderator snip ]

>I'm no specialist either (Germanic philology is my thing, at least
>officially).  But my Latin dictionary (an old Cassell's from the 1930s) lists
>only _lac_, not _lacte_.  Still, it is conceivable that _lacte_ arose in
>Vulgar Latin, and it would be a perfectly good ancestor of _leche_ et al.

Although I am no specialist either, I do have a life-long interest in
Romance linguistics, so let me share my thoughts on this topic:

1. I think that the main reason for Latin neuter nouns turning into
masculines in the Romance languages is that in the singular, neuter
adjectives of the -o declension (by far the most common) were identical to
their masculine counterparts in all cases except the nominative even in
Classical Latin:

Nom.  bonus  bonum
Acc.     bonum
Gen.     boni
Dat.     bono
Abl.     bono

Once phonetic attrition (loss of final d) achieved the same for the definite
article-to-be ille (ille/*illu *illu illi illo illo), the general impression
must have been that masculine and neuter nouns mostly take the same
qualifiers and are replaced by the same pronouns, therefore they must belong
to the same category. The loss of final -s in the precursors of Italian and
Romanian must have reinforced this trend in eastern dialects, since then the
nominative also became identical: *bonu.

2. The word "lac" must have been felt to be an isolate in the language.
Correct me if I am wrong, but no other noun with final -c survived into
Vulgar Latin. It would have been natural for the nominative/accusative
singular to be re-formed based on the genitive lactis, especially because of
analogy with the similar-sounding nox/noctis, replaced in Vulgar Latin by
*noctis/noctis.

3. To continue this trend of thought, the fact that lac became feminine
leche in Spanish is not so much a matter of a neuter noun becoming feminine.
Instead, we should see it as one of several examples of masculine nouns of
the Latin third declension becoming feminine (and vice versa?). Leche, sal,
sangre, flor are feminine in Spanish; fleur, dent and mer are feminine in
French; ponte is feminine in Portuguese. With dictionaries and some time on
my hands I am sure I could provide more examples. What I cannot provide is a
reason: analogy, semantic associations, sub- or superstratum influence? Any
thoughts by real experts?

4. On corpus and tempus, we should remember that the final -s in these two
words was very resilient in those dialects of Vulgar Latin that kept
word-final -s. Old Spanish still had cuerpos and tiempos in the singular for
these words (masculine of course), although the language eventually left off
the final s through analogy with all other nouns. And Old French had an -s
in these words in both the cas sujet and cas rigime in the singular, still
kept today in the orthography (corps, temps), and even in speech if we
consider the nouns in expressions like "de temps en temps" as in the
singular.

Best wishes to all,
Gabor


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu Jan 25 17:50:10 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 18:50:10 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
In-Reply-To: <F265FcShw8pCjAZK0Yb00004c39@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.185010.0100.>

On Sun, 21 Jan 2001 03:54:24 -0000, "Douglas G Kilday"
<acnasvers at hotmail.com> wrote:

>Some brief comments: First, *lactem is not required to explain the /t/ in
>the Romance forms.

But it is to explain the -e.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 25 18:29:23 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 19:29:23 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.192923.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kreso Megyeral" <miskec4096 at hotmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, January 16, 2001 10:25 PM

>> I'm no specialist and I don't know what was the vulgar latin or the early
>> romance word for milk on the Peninsula at that time, but my latin dictionary
>> gives "lacte, is" for milk (and "lac" as an archaic form). I think that
>> "lactem" then, would have been the accusative form (I have to rely on my
>> memory, though, since I don't have any Latin grammar with me :) ).

> It can't, since all the nouns ending on -e are still neuter in Latin.

[Ed]

I'd like to add that my (Dutch) Latin dictionary says 'lacte' is archaic, and
'lac' is the regular nominative in Classic Latin. Anyway, it is a neuter, so
'lactem' is impossible as you said, since all neuters have identical
nominatives and accusatives. But, of course, an accusative 'lacte' is possible.

It also says that it is derived from a root (g)lact-.

Ed. Selleslagh


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu Jan 25 17:45:35 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 18:45:35 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
In-Reply-To: <003901c07fb7$1bbeb680$4e05703e@edsel>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.184535.0100.>

On Tue, 16 Jan 2001 13:23:06 +0100, "Eduard Selleslagh" <edsel at glo.be>
wrote:

><Carrasco> has all the characteristics of a somewhat complicated origin: it is
>almost certainly a compound, with the suffix -(V)sco, which can be IE but just
>as well Iberian or Basque, even though that wouldn't affect its meaning. I
>would guess that the Latin form is derived from a substrate word with /a/. The
>Spanish word cannot possibly be derived directly from the late-Latin form,
>because the Latin c would have become /T/ (English th), not /k/ [In Sp. cerro
>means 'small mountain, hill']. On the other hand, no such objection exists for
>It. cerro.  Could <carrasco> and Lat. cerrus /kerrus/ be related to a pre-IE
>root and/or Celtic, for a certain type of mountain landscape? In such case,
>the suffix -sko would make a lot of sense. Just a thought.

Carrasca's grow on stony ground (the Dutch name is "steeneik"), so a
connection with *KARR- "stone" is not unlikely.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From centrostudilaruna at libero.it  Fri Jan 26 19:26:06 2001
From: centrostudilaruna at libero.it (Alberto Lombardo)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 20:26:06 +0100
Subject: R: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <FRI.26.JAN.2001.202606.0100.>

ES wrote:

"<Carrasco> has all the characteristics of a somewhat complicated origin: it is
almost certainly a compound, with the suffix -(V)sco, which can be IE but just
as well Iberian or Basque, even though that wouldn't affect its meaning. I
would guess that the Latin form is derived from a substrate word with /a/.  The
Spanish word cannot possibly be derived directly from the late-Latin form,
because the Latin c would have become /T/ (English th), not /k/ [In Sp.  cerro
means 'small mountain, hill']. On the other hand, no such objection exists for
It. cerro.  Could <carrasco> and Lat. cerrus /kerrus/ be related to a pre-IE
root and/or Celtic, for a certain type of mountain landscape? In such case, the
suffix -sko would make a lot of sense. Just a thought."

I'd like just add that the suffix -asko is the more tipycal locative ligurian
suffix; it seems to have had IE links. The meaning must have been "high,
elevated place".

Alberto Lombardo
Italy


From mcv at wxs.nl  Thu Jan 25 17:48:24 2001
From: mcv at wxs.nl (Miguel Carrasquer Vidal)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 18:48:24 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
In-Reply-To: <LAW2-F53sXZZTHfyQge00001202@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.184824.0100.>

On Thu, 18 Jan 2001 00:10:10 +0100, "Kreso Megyeral"
<miskec4096 at hotmail.com> wrote:

>In one Spanish grammar written in Croatian I found that there are still some
>words in Spanish considered neuter (of course, not "leche") that express
>collectives or some young animals. The article quoted is LO. Is it indeed,
>or is it some interpretation of the author?

LO as an article (i.e. preceding a noun) is completely unknown to me.

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv at wxs.nl


From edsel at glo.be  Thu Jan 25 18:59:12 2001
From: edsel at glo.be (Eduard Selleslagh)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 19:59:12 +0100
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.195912.0100.>

----- Original Message -----
From: "Kreso Megyeral" <miskec4096 at hotmail.com>
Sent: Thursday, January 18, 2001 12:10 AM

> In one Spanish grammar written in Croatian I found that there are still some
> words in Spanish considered neuter (of course, not "leche") that express
> collectives or some young animals. The article quoted is LO. Is it indeed,
> or is it some interpretation of the author?

[Ed]

LO is a definite article for the neuter sg., derived from Lat. demonstrative
(acc.) ILLUD (like LA < ILLAM, and EL < ILLUM). It is usually used in phrases
like 'hacer lo necesario' ('faire le n?cessaire', 'do what's needed/the
necessary things') where it designates collectives, or in more abstract ones :
a characteristic like 'lo bello, lo bonito es que...' ('the beautiful/nice
thing [about it] is that...').

In some regions - the one I know for certain is Murcia - it appears in place
names like 'Lo Pag?n', apparently referring originally to a property of some
family; in the same region you find also toponyms like Los Urrutias (Basque
settlers in the Campo de Cartagena when it was still largely a 'secano') or Los
Velones, where such reference cannot be doubted. I would guess that LO has then
a collective meaning 'all that belongs to...'

LO can also be used separately as a general indication of 'the things': 'lo que
hay que hacer...' ('that what has to be done...'), similar to Fr. 'ce [que]'.

I am not aware of any neuter nouns in Spanish.

If my memory serves me right, there are some southern Italian family names like
Lo Vecchio, that might be based upon similar toponyms, but I leave that to the
specialists in S. Italian dialects. Of course, LO is an article in regular
Italian, but only as a replacement before sp-, sc- etc,. for euphonic reasons
('lo sport').

Ed. Selleslagh


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Jan 25 20:11:34 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 15:11:34 -0500
Subject: txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....
In-Reply-To: <LAW2-F53sXZZTHfyQge00001202@hotmail.com>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.151134.0500.>

[ moderator edited ]

>Rick Mc Callister wrote:

>>How common is this phenomenon in other Romance
>>languages and other other languages with grammatical gender?

>Interesting thing with disappearing of Latin neuter nouns happens in
>Romanian. Romanian actually has neuter gender, but in singular forms it's
>equal to masculine, while in plural to feminine. Even the definite article,
>which is postpositive in Romanian, doesn't have its own form, but follows
>the same pattern.

>In one Spanish grammar written in Croatian I found that there are still some
>words in Spanish considered neuter (of course, not "leche") that express
>collectives or some young animals. The article quoted is LO. Is it indeed,
>or is it some interpretation of the author?

	Spanish neuter lo is used with adjectives to express abstract
qualities; e.g.
bueno "good (masc.)"
el bueno "the good (person, thing, place) (masc.)"
lo bueno "that which is good, the good (thing, part, aspect, etc.)"

there are also the neuter demonstratives esto "this one", eso "that one",
aquello "that one (far away in space or time; or last in a series)". These
are used to refer to abstract thoughts or things without antecedents such
as a "one-eyed, one-horned flying purple people-eater"

regarding collectives or baby animals, you just use the normal masculine or
feminine article; e.g. el ternero "the calf", el cachorro "the puppy, cub,
whelp", el gatito "the kitten"; el pinal, el pinar "the pine grove", los
pinos "the pines"

Asturian, on the other hand, does have a neuter that's used for collectives
and, I think, "topic" or "generic" use. Posner talks about it and I have an
Asturian student who's heard it used.

Regarding masculine singular, feminine plural. Off the top of the head, the
example in Spanish is el arte, las artes. Some speakers (and most
dictionaries), however, use el arte (masc.) to mean "art" in a generic
sense and el arte (fem.) to mean "art" in a specific sense. I've only come
across the plural as las artes (fem.).
The form el, normally masculine, is, of course, also used with feminine
nouns beginning with a stressed /a/

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


From rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu  Thu Jan 25 17:58:28 2001
From: rmccalli at sunmuw1.MUW.Edu (Rick Mc Callister)
Date: Thu, 25 Jan 2001 12:58:28 -0500
Subject: cat < ?
In-Reply-To: <e3.f126599.2795a489@aol.com>
Message-ID: <THU.25.JAN.2001.125828.0500.>

[snip]

>The tail idea also occurs in <skiouros> squirrel, interpreted as
>'shadow-tail.'   But the shadow part <skio-) doesn't seem to make a lot of
>sense.  (Perhaps, <skiros>, sometimes land overgrown with bushes, scrub.)

	If they look like American squirrels, their long thick tails shade
them like umbrellas --but I admit that I'm getting into folk etymology.
	"Scrub tail, brush tail, bushy tail" describe squirrels even better
--that is, if skiros + ouros actually means that in Greek

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


From jharvey at ucla.edu  Sat Jan 27 01:32:14 2001
From: jharvey at ucla.edu (Jasmin Harvey)
Date: Fri, 26 Jan 2001 17:32:14 -0800
Subject: cat < ?
In-Reply-To: <e3.f126599.2795a489@aol.com>
Message-ID: <FRI.26.JAN.2001.173214.0800.>

[ Moderator's note:
  I am setting aside the general prohibition against CC'd messages in this one
  instance, since there may be some interest on the part of the non-members
  who have contributed.  Please be circumspect in replies, since they will not
  be used to the volume this list can generate.
  --rma ]

I forwarded parts of this discussion to a friend who forwarded it onward and
this response came back which may be of interest.

Jasmin Harvey
Germanic Linguistics C.Phil.
http://www.germanic.ucla.edu
jharvey at ucla.edu

-------------------------------------
The source for the Celtic Cat information ... was Alexei Kondratiev, via
Brenda Daverin.

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Fwd: Re: Of human cattage
Date: Fri, 19 Jan 2001 23:18:18 -0800
From: "B. Daverin" <bdaverin at best.com>
To: "Birrell Walsh" <birrell at well.com>

Here is my source's response to the origins of the word "cat" taken back
to Indo-European through Old/Common Celtic. I know that it's possible
that someone else on that list has already pointed this out, but in case
not, here's more for the discussion.

Sla/n,
Brenda

---------------- Begin Forwarded Message ----------------

The Celtic word for "cat" is perfectly reconstructible as _kattos_ (also
feminine _katta_). This gives _cat_ in both Irish and Scots Gaelic, _kayt_ in
Manx, _cath_ in Welsh, _kath_ in Cornish, and _kazh_ in Breton.  Many
etymological dictionaries say that it's a borrowing from Latin _cattus_, but it
seems completely obvious to me that the reverse is true, that _cattus_ in Latin
(which appears rather late) is in fact a borrowing from a Celtic or other
northern European source, displacing the original _felis_. That the word is
native there is confirmed by the Gaulish name _Cattos_ and the tribal name
_Chatti_ or _Chattes_ ("the Cats" -- ie, "the Wildcats") from the
Celtic-Germanic border country.
   The word is thought to come from an IE stem *_kat-_ or *_qat-_ meaning "to
cast down", in a specialised meaning of "what is cast down = offspring of an
animal". An independent derivation in Latin is _catulus_ "puppy". The Celtic
word evidently began with the sense of "baby animal", then specialised as
"kitten", and eventually came to mean the animal at any age.


From miskec4096 at hotmail.com  Sun Jan 28 15:45:05 2001
From: miskec4096 at hotmail.com (Kreso Megyeral)
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 16:45:05 +0100
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <SUN.28.JAN.2001.164505.0100.>

Kastytis Beitas wrote:

>I can propose other possible origin for some 'non-cat' cat words.
>I think it is a rather frequent case when predatory animal is named
>according its prey.
>For example, in Lithuanian:
>peleda "owl"                   <--  pele "mous" + eda "to eat",
>zhuvedra "tern on gull"  <--  zhuvis 'fish' + eda "to eat" (or edrus
>"voracious")
>In English:
>polecat or polcat at 1320 "ferret" <-- Old French poule, pol "fowl, hen" +
>cat

Typical example are taboo-words, for example Slavic medvld - "honey eater",
meaning that direct mentioning of the animal would bring bad luck.

>2. Hindi bhili 'cat' <-> Russian bilo 'thing for beating', Eng. beat etc.
>(maybe this bhili is cognate to Lithuanian pele)

Russian "bilo" is a noun derived from the verb "bit'" - to beat, meaning
that it CAN be related to Hindi, but it could be clear only if someone knew
the Sanskrit word.

>This comparison of mouse anf fly supports my hypothesis, because other
>possible meaning for 'fly-words' is a "bitter; one who bites". This fits to
>"bee-words" too: in Lithuanian bite "bee" etc. Armenian muk 'mouse' is
>similar to Russian muka "flour; what is grinded' and Russian muka
>"suffering"...

Similar, yes, but if you don't pay attention on vocal laws, showing that
Russian "u" comes from older "9" (nasalysed o), thus "m9ka".


From miskec4096 at hotmail.com  Sun Jan 28 15:55:26 2001
From: miskec4096 at hotmail.com (Kreso Megyeral)
Date: Sun, 28 Jan 2001 16:55:26 +0100
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <SUN.28.JAN.2001.165526.0100.>

David White wrote:

>A truly minor point ... Mongooses (-geese?) are viverrids, not mustelids, and
>only one type of viverrid, the genet (not mongoose) of Iberia (spreading
>recently to France and even western Germany), occurs in Europe.

>  For the Romans to call a mongoose a cat would have been more or less as for
>us to call skunks 'polecats' or a kind of racoon 'ringtail cats'.

>Not that that stops us. Speaking of deplorable, or understandable, vagueness
>in terms for animal, it is within the realm of possibility the word for 'fox'
>and 'wolf' were not originally distinguished, which would explain a few
>things.

Another good example occurs in Hungarian, where the word for turtle actually
means "frog in shield", showing that even two different classes of
vertebrates can merge. But mongooses are more similar to martens then to
cats, and the marten is also quite usual species in Europe.


From vistasjy at md.prestige.net  Tue Jan 30 03:55:49 2001
From: vistasjy at md.prestige.net (JohnYY)
Date: Mon, 29 Jan 2001 22:55:49 -0500
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <MON.29.JAN.2001.225549.0500.>

The classical solution to the "mongoose plural" problem is embodied in the
old (and probably apocryphal) message sent to the e-tailer by the poor chap
beset by a plethora of cobras: "Please send me a mongoose; by the way, send
me another one.". Since it stems from Marathi 'mong{s', perhaps a more
elegant solutiion would be to use the plural form from that language (Does
anyone know it?) (cf. "cherubim")

----------
> From: David L. White <dlwhite at texas.net>
> Date: Monday, January 15, 2001 10:28 PM

>     Mongooses (-geese?)

[ moderator snip ]


From hwhatting at hotmail.com  Tue Jan 30 07:19:25 2001
From: hwhatting at hotmail.com (Hans-Werner Hatting)
Date: Tue, 30 Jan 2001 08:19:25 +0100
Subject: cat < ?
Message-ID: <TUE.30.JAN.2001.081925.0100.>

Dear List members,

I think Kaystytis Beitas has made a valid point in suggesting a further
source for the name of the cat.
But there are problems with some of the links he proposes:

1. KB wrote:
>For example: 1. Latin  feles 'cat' reminds of Lithuanian pele 'mouse'. In
>Watkins Dictionary of Indo-European Roots pel- means "to thrust, to
>strike".

>>I suppose Hindi bhili "cat" would be too fortuitous to suggest a
>>connection based on *bhil-, *bhel-?

>2. Hindi bhili 'cat' <-> Russian bilo 'thing for beating', Eng. beat > etc.
>(maybe this bhili is cognate to Lithuanian pele)

I don't know the origin of Hindi *bhili. Based on what KB suggests, a link
to the root behind Engl. bite, Gm. beissen etc. might be possible.
Certainly it is not linked to Lith. pele, as Indian /bh/ corresponds to
Baltic /b/ (if we don't pull out the magic wand of taboo changes, of
course). The vocalism (Hindi /i/ - Latin /e/ should not correspond)makes it
also problematic to link bhili to feles. If we want to find a cognate for
"pele", we would have to look for something like *pel/pol- in Latin and like
*pal/par/p.r- in Indo-Aryan.

2. KB:
>English mouse and German Maus are similar to Russian musor "debris;
>litter". Chernykh states that musor is cognate with Russian musolit'
>"slabber, slaver" and both them are originated from IE *meu-, *mou- >"damp,
>moist" and "liquid dirt; mud". But this cognateness is between >musor and
>mud, moist is more distant in my opinion: musor is >originated as "litter,
>produced by chapping (or by mice?)"...

As KB himself notes, the Gmc. mouse words are related to Slavic mysh', going
back to PIE *muHs- or sim. As PIE /s/ became /sh/ in Slavic after /u/, /i/,
/r/, /k/, "musor" cannot go back to PIE *muHs-; the /s/ goes either back to
PIE /k'/, or the word is a compund of the root quoted by Chernykhov and the
root contained in Russian _ssorit'sja_ "quarrel". I don't have an
etymological dictionary here to check that question.

3. KB:
>So there is some basis to state that this all-Indo-European word cat >in
>all its variations may by descendant of some Indo-European root >with
>meaning "to hit, to strike, to make hole etc". Distant cognate of >this
>hypothetical (?) root may be Watkins's kat- "to fight" and kat- >"down".

<snip>

>Or cut in Chambers Dictionary of Etymology: ,,Probably before 1300 either
>as: cutten <...>, kitten <...>; of >uncertain orrigin (possibly borrowed
>from  Scandinavian source; >compare Swedish dialect kuta, kata "to cut",
>kuta "knife", and >Icelandic kuti "knife". ''

Well, "cut" cannot be a Gmc. cognate of a PIE *kat-, as PIE */k/ gives /h/
in Gmc. in Anlaut position, and /t/ should give /T/ or /D/. The same reason
speaks against deriving the Gmc. cat words from such a PIE root.

One aside - are there any data available for the first recordings of the
_katto- / gatto- _ - word? As already has been stated by Rick Mc Callister
at the start of this thread, the words look too much alike to be of PIE
origin, and I would add that the k/g variation in Greek, as well as between
individual Romance languages (e.g., It. gatto vs. French chat) also are
arguments against an inheritance from PIE. My preference is to see the word
as a loan from a non-IE source, maybe on such a route: (Source language) >
Greek > Romance, Celtic, Gmc, Slavic etc.

4. KB:
>So distant relativeof English cat or Lithuanian kate "male cat" or >Russian
>kot "male cat" may be English kettle, Lithuanian katilas >"kettle": In
>Chambers Dict.of Etym.: ,,kettle -- <...> borrowed directly from Latin
>catillus "small bowl, >dish or plate", diminutive of catinus "bowl, dish,
>pot"; perhaps >cognate with Greek kotyle "small vessel, cup" <...>. ''

Concerning the impossibility of Gmc. /k/ being from PIE /k/ (except if one
uses that other magic wand, a IE substrate language influence), see above.
Lith. "katilas" is most probably a loan from Latin, via Slavic (v. Russian
"kotel", Common Slavic *koti0lu0-) (i0, u0 denoting the front and back yers,
respectively).

5. KB:
>This excerpt from Chambers Dict.of Etym. reminds on my old posting (Lith.
>peilis "knife" <-> Lith. pele "mous"):

>>The similar case is with Lithuanian "peilis" 'knife'. It is similar >>to
>>Russian "pila" 'saw', Lat. "pilum" 'heavy javelin, pestle', OHG "pfil"
>>'arrow, stake'. In this context OE "pil" 'stake, shaft, spike' and Eng
>>"pile" 'arrow, >>dart' >may be not borrowings as it is stated in Chambers
>>Dict. of >>Etym. ( p.794)] but words of common Indo-European origin.

The vocalism speaks against pele and peilis being cognates - there is no PIE
ablaut pattern e-ei. The link peilis - pilum - pila looks possible. Because
of the initial p/pf the English and OHG words have to be loans from Latin.

I hope I did not spoil too much fun by insisting on the observance of sound
laws. But I think if one disregards them, one should give good reasons for
doing so, otherwise we'll very soon arrive again in a state where "in
etymology, vowels mean nothing, and consonants very little".

Best regards,
Hans-Werner Hatting