Celtic Germanic relationship

[X99Lynx at aol.com]

In a message dated 11/30/2000 11:23:14 PM, brent at bermls.oau.org writes:

<< <Eg., the PrtGrmc word for "iron" is a Celtic loan, as are several other
    terms (ruler and servant, for instance) and the form of these loans
    indicates that they were borrowed before the first Germanic sound-shift,
    since it underwent that change.>

  Do these loans provide evidence for all three consonant grades?
  The only words that come to mind are *i:sarn- (iron) and *ri:k- (power),
  which only provide evidence for PIE *g -> PGmc *k.>>

Just a note that the fact that those words underwent a sound shift does not
mean necessarily that they were not borrowed after the sound shift.

Note that these words may have been subjected to the "phonotactics" of the
borrowing language.  Larry Trask mentioned an example recently of how complex
the conversion may be:

<<A Latin noun is normally borrowed into Basque in its accusative
singular form.  Assuming that the accusative of <incubus> would
have been <incubum>, the expected Basque treatment of this would
be *<ingubu>, without nasalization, or *<ingumu>, with nasalization.
But I don't know what inflectional class <incubus> belonged to.>>

Thus the word "incubus" would be expected to go through a sound
transformation as it enters the language rather than remaining in its foreign
form.  So that Celtic words in Germanic may also have gone through a
conversion irrespective of when the sound change occurred.

With respect to the word iron, we have clear evidence that iron was known
before iron metalurgy was introduced.  In fact, use of meteoric and surface
iron (gathered from eroding streams) appears in Asia Minor at least a
thousand years before the "iron age."  I can't look it up right now, but
there may be evidence of the incidental use of iron in the bronze age in
Denmark.  In any case, familiarity with the metal might be enough to give it
a name, whether or not it was being turned into something.  And so that name
could well seriously predate the iron age.

Another point-of-view worth mentioning is the one which sees the "consonant
shifts" in Germanic as archaisms rather than innovations.  In which case, the
time of borrowing would be almost indeterminable. Or the word could have been
common and then undergone changes in the respective languages in the reverse
direction, ie, as a change in Celtic rather than in Germanic.

Regards,
Steve Long