non-IE/Germanic/g

[Larry Trask]

On Sun, 21 Feb 1999, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

> garbo:n "sheaf" [pre-Germanic] > Garbe "sheaf";
> garwa [W Germanic] > garwo:n [W Germanic] > yarrow
> [< ?Vasconic < pre-Basque *gerwa < *gerba;
> see Basque garba "bundle, sheaf", gerba "catkin", Spanish garfa "hook,
> claw", grapa "staple"]
> [tv95, tv97]
> [?rel. to *gar- in sense of "to assemble, collect"]

Basque <garba> `sheaf' is strictly confined to the French Basque
Country.  I think everybody accepts that this is a borrowing from the
synonymous Bearnais <garbe>, itself of Germanic origin and cognate with
French <gerbe>.

The other word is more commonly <garba>, with a variant <gerba>, and it
doesn't mean `catkin', but rather the kind of flower found on a
cornstalk -- that is, a "sheaf-like" flower, I suppose.  Everybody seems
to agree that this is merely a transferred sense of the preceding item.

> gersto: [pre-Germanic] > Gerste "barley"
> [< ?Vasconic";
> see Basque gar-i "grain, wheat", gargarr "barley"] [tv95, tv97]

Basque <gari> means `wheat' everywhere, and also `bread' in one part of
the country, but I don't think it means `grain' anywhere.  Since its
combining form is invariably <gal-> in its numerous compounds, we
reconstruct *<gali>, with the categorical Basque shift of intervocalic
*/l/ to /r/ in the medieval period.  The word for `barley', correctly
<garagar>, appears to be some kind of reduplication of the preceding.

I've no idea what that asterisked *<gar-> is meant to denote: the Basque
for `assemble, collect, gather' is <bil->.  Nor am I any too sure what
the Spanish words are doing in here, but I don't have Corominas handy.

Larry Trask
COGS
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QH
UK

larryt at cogs.susx.ac.uk