Showing posts with label Balto-Slavic. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Balto-Slavic. Show all posts

19 September 2015

Galician-Portuguese silva 'bramble' (updated)

Blackberries

Contrarily to what some linguists think, Galician-Portuguese silva, silveira (collective) 'bramble (Rubus)' is unrelated to the homonymous Latin silva 'forest' (which regularly gives Romance selva), but it's cognate to Leonese silba 'service berry', silbar, silbal (collective) 'service tree (Sorbus domestica)'2.

Service berries

This is a substrate loanword *silba1 with parallels (through lambdacism) in Romance serba 'service berry'3 (Catalan serva, Occitan sèrba, Spanish serba, jerba, sierba id., serbal, sierbal, Catalan servera, server (collective) 'service tree'4), Lithuanian serbentà 'currant (Ribes)' and dialectal Russian serbalína, serberína 'rose hip', sor(o)balína 'bramble'5, Latin sorbus 'service tree' (Spanish sorbo), sorbum 'service berry', from which derive Leonese (Liébana) suerbaFrench sorbe id., sorbier, Galician sorbeira, solveira (collective), Leonese  (Liébana) suerbal  'service tree'.

Although these forms show the typical IE ablaut e ~ o6, we also can find variants with /u/ vocalism: Leonese (Liébana) surba 'service berry', surbu (collective) 'service tree' and regional Spanish (Álava, Bureba, High Rioja) zurba, zurbia 'service berry', zurbal, zurbial, surbial (collective) 'service tree'. 

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1 The shift -lb- > -lv- is regular in Portuguese.
2 J. Oria de Rueda et al. (2006): Botánica forestal del género Sorbus en España, in Investigación Agraria. Sistema y recursos forestales, vol. 15, nº 1,  p. 166-186.  
3 The proposed connection (Pedersen) with Celtic *swerwo- 'bitter' (Old Irish serb, Middle Welsh chwerw) can be ruled out. 
4 The forms serbo, jerbo, selbo, jelbo are the product of a contamination with sorbo.
M. Vasmer (1955): Russisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, p. 697.
In fact, some Indo-Europeanists reconstruct a protoform *serbh- ~ *sorbh-.

03 August 2013

Aragonese paniquesa 'weasel' (updated)















Aragonese paniquesa, Gascon panquèra, panquèsa 'weasel (Mustela nivalis)' is a diminutive form (with the Romance suffix -ella) which underwent a folk etymology from pan y queso 'bread and cheese'1. This word shows the idiosyncratic treatment of -ll- in Pyrenaic2, similar to the one of West Asturian, which has a voiceless retroflex africate [tʂ].
 
This is an Eurasiatic root found in Eskimo-Aleut *paniɣ 'daughter', Altaic *phjun[e] ‘a small wild animal’ (Tungusic *pün´- 'jerboa, flying squirrel, mole; weasel; hedgehog', Mongolian *hünegen 'fox', Turkic *enük (~ *ünek) 'young of a wild animal, puppy'), which I'd link (through labialization of the initial labiovelar) to Caucasian *ɦnǝ:qq’wǝ: (~ *ɦqq’wǝ:nǝ:) 'mouse, rat'3, Yeniseian *ku:n´ (~ g-) 'wolverine', Balto-Slavic *keun- 'marten'.

Possibly also related are Latin cunīculus (a Paleo-Hispanic loanword) and dialectal Basque untxi (HN, R), entxe (HN) 'rabbit', all them diminutive forms.
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1 Hence the Basque calque ogigaztae (B) 'weasel', from ogi 'bread' and gaztae 'cheese'. For other names of 'weasel' in Basque, see here.
2 An extinct Romance language spoken in the High Middle Ages and which gave loanwords to Aragonese and some Pyrenaic Gascon varieties, especially Bearnese. 
3 The metathesized variant is related to Uralic *n´ukk- 'fox', Dravidian *nakk- 'fox, jackal'.

31 December 2009

The lentil

The native Basque word for 'lentil (Lens culinaris)' can be reconstructed as *tink-il:(a), *sink-il:(a), most of whose variants are restricted to the dialect spoken in the Navarrese valley of Salazar1: tindil, txindil, txingla, xingala. The form txintxil(a) spread also to the neighbouring Roncalese dialect, and further along in the Aragonese valley of Ansó we find tentilla, an interference with the genuine Romance form lentilla.

This word (also found in other Romance languages like Spanish lenteja, French lentille) is derived from Latin lenticula, a diminutive form of Latin lēns, lentis 'lentil', with cognates in Germanic (Old High German linsī, linsin), Slavic *lę̄tjā and Baltic (Lithuanian lę̃ši-s (-iō)).  This could be related to Semitic *ʕa-daʃ- 'lentil' with a shift d- > l- and a nasal infix.

 The Basque forms tilista, txilista, dilista (Westernmost dialects)2 are a diminutive  form *ti-lis-ta with a fossilized Berber article (feminine plural) ti-3 agglutinated.

I think this is substrate loanword whose ultimate origin is Afro-Asiatic *da/ingw- 'a k. of beans; corn', a root widely attested in several branches.
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1 In other dialects this word can refer to different plants, mostly of the vetch (Vicia) family.
2 The Gipuzkoan form dilista was chosen for representing the word in the standardized language or Euskera Batua (lit. 'United Basque language').
3 Also found in Sardinian.