txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....

[Rick Mc Callister]

[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