Olives/was: Lactose Intolerance/Renfrew

[Jim Rader]

I seem to recall instances where /ei/ in Old Latin or perhaps more
accurately pre-Latin yielded /e:/ rather than /i:/ before the
semivowel <u>.  Hence *ole:uom > *ole:um by loss of the
semivowel before o/u and then > attested <oleum> by the rule that
"vocalis ante vocalem corripitur."  <Olea> would be a new formation
on the model of <oli:va>.  A similar case is <di:vus> as opposed to
<deus>, both from *deiuos.

Jim Rader

>[Douglas Kilday]
> Latin <oli:va> evidently comes from Etruscan *eleiva by regular changes:
> Etr. short /el/ generally becomes Lat. short /ol/, and Old Lat. /ei/ becomes
> Class. Lat. /i:/. The Etruscan lexeme is attested in adjectival form (TLE
> 762, bucchero aryballos) <aska mi eleivana> 'a vessel (am) I pertaining to
> oil' = 'I am an oil-vessel'. This in turn looks like a borrowing from
> Western Greek <elaiwa:> (cf. Etr. Eivas from WGk Aiwa:s 'Ajax'). I'm not
> sure how to explain the shorter Lat. forms <olea>, <oleum> vs. <oli:va>,
> <oli:vum>.