Spanish substrate/A

[Max W Wheeler]

On Thu, 11 Mar 1999, Rick Mc Callister wrote:

> arrancar "to crank, rip from" c. 1140, [c]
> cat. ant. renc, ant. fr. ranc < ¿germ.? [c]
> ?rel. to renco "lame, crippled"? [rmcc]

Coromines, in his Catalan Etymological Dictionary, rejects the
suggested Germanic etymology he had proposed in DECH, preferring a
non-Celtic but IE etymon (sorota`ptic o li'gur [Sorothaptic or
Ligurian]), citing Lith, rin~kti [pick, collect], paranka` [gleaning],
OPruss ra~nk-twei [steal], isrankeis [let go!, deliver!], Germ wrankjan
[> Eng wrench], BSl *wranka: [hand, leg]. This or a similar root is the
source by a different route of Romance BRANCA [leg, paw], [branch].

The verb certainly extends to Oc. and NW Italian dialects, and less
surely to the rest of Italy. Coromines's discussion of the etymology
extends to 4 columns, where in part he's arguing that this word's
distribution is typical of the IE dialect-type he calls Sorothaptic
(lexically and geographically between Celt, BSl, Illyrian-Venetic and
Germanic), though he agrees that variation in treatment of *wr- is
problematic.

Max