txakur/dzhagaru/cachorro....

[Douglas G Kilday]

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