txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....

Douglas G Kilday acnasvers at hotmail.com
Tue Jan 2 04:16:27 UTC 2001


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



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