Summer and apple: history of a Nostratic Wanderwort

In Greek mythology, Hēméra was the primeval goddness of the day. From this word and Armenian awr 'day', Indo-Europeanists such as Mallory-Adams¹ reconstruct an IE protoform *h₂ēm-ər- '(heat of the) day', which I link to Semitic *ħamm- 'to be hot; warm'², with the voiceless pharyngeal fricative ħ corresponding to "laryngeal" h₂. 

It doesn't take a long stretch of the imagination to devise a derived variant *HVmV-lV/HVmV-lV which gave (with metathesis) Nakh-Daghestanian *mhalV/mhanV- 'warm' and IE *mah₂lo- 'apple', with a straightforward semantic drift from 'warm (season)' to 'fruit'. Several IE languages of North Europe (Celtic, Germanic, Balto-Slavic) reflect a protoform *abVl- 'apple' (< *amHVl-?) which is regarded as a Paleo-European substrate loanword by some specialists.⁴

A variant *ʕu-malV/*ʕu-manV would be the origin of Uralic *omena/omVrV 'apple' as well as  Basque udare, udari, madari 'pear'³ (with denasalization and further delabialization), umao (B), umo 'ripe, seasoned'.  This makes sense because the apple tree is originary of Kurdistan, precisely in the area where Nostratic was presumably spoken.

On the other hand, we've got yet another IE variant *sam-/*səm-ro- 'summer'⁴ and Hittite sam(a)lu- 'apple (tree)'.⁶⁵

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¹ J.P. Mallory & Q.D. Adams (2006): The Oxford Introduction to PIE and the PIE World.  

² Also cognate are Hurrian am- 'to burn' and (possibly through an Etruscan intermediate) Latin amāre 'to love', amor 'love'.

³ For example, Theo Vennemann links it to Afrasian *ʔa-bul- 'male genitals', which (in his own words) is "semantically unsatisfactory although phonetically perfect". See T. Vennemann (1998): Andromeda and the Apples of the Hesperides, in Europa Vasconica, Europa Semitica, 591-652.

⁴ The ablaut form *sem- usually quoted in dictionaries isn't attested anywhere.

⁵ Explained by ortodox IE-ists such as Kloekhorst as the result of a "s-mobile".

Etruscan φersu 'masked character (in games)' (updated)

Latin persōna 'theatre mask' is a loanword from Etruscan *φersu-na > φersu 'masked character (in games)'. This can be analized as a derivative from an unattested form *φers 'husk', an agricultural term with correspondences in Hittite paršdu 'leaf, foliage'¹, linked in turn by Alexei Kassian to Kartvelian *purtś 'husk, foliage' (Georgian purcel ’leaf, foliage', Megrel purča 'chaff, husk', Laz purča 'sweet corn ear', purčumale 'a k. of weed'), *prtś-wn- 'to husk, to scale'².

Presumably related to this etymology is the Greek theonym Perséphonē (Etruscan Φersipnei, Latin Proserpina), attested on several Attic vases from the 5th century BC as Persóphatta, P(h)erséphatta, Pherréphatta. Rudolf Wachter analyzes it as a compound whose second member would be derived from Indo-European *-gʷhn-t-jā < *gʷhen- 'to beat, to kill', and the first one related to Sanskrit parṣá- 'sheaf, bundle', Young Avestan parša- 'ear (of corn)', to which Michael Weiss -in a personal communication to Wachter- also adds Latin porrum and Greek práson 'leek', from a supposed Indo-European lexeme *pr̥s-o-'³. Thus the reconstructed meaning of the theonym would be 'sheaf-beater', i.e. 'threshing maiden'⁴. 

However, like most Indo-Iranian lexicon related to agriculture, *parš appears to be a substrate loanword from the language spoken by BMAC people⁵. On the other hand, for Slavic *proso- 'millet', Georg Holzer posited a loanword from a substrate language he called Temematic (Temematisch in German) after its proposed sound correspondences with PIE and where *r̥ > ro⁶. Although Holzer's theory has been discredited as a whole⁷ it could still explain the etymology of the Slavic word from IE *bhar(e)s 'a k. of cereal (millet, barley, spelt)' (Latin far, farris), a remnant of the languages spoken by the Neolithic farmers who colonized Europe from the Near East.

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¹ Wrongly translated by some authors as 'sprout, sprig'. See A. Kloekhorst (2008): Etymological Dictionary of Hittite, pp. 645-646. 

² A. Kassian (2009): Anatolian lexical isolates and their external Nostratic cognates, in Orientalia et Classica, §48.

³ M. De Vaan (2008): Etymological Dictionary of Latin and the Other Italic Languages, pp. 481-482.

⁴ R. Wachter (2006): Persephone, the Threshing Maiden, in Die Sprache, vol. 47, no. 2 (2007-2008), pp.163-181.

⁵ M. Witzel (2003): Linguistic Evidence for Cultural Exchange in Prehistoric Western Central Asia, in Sino-Platonic Papers 129, p. 33.

⁶ G. Holzer (1989): Entlehnungen aus einer bisher unbekannten indogermanischen Sprach in Urslavischen und Urbaltischen, §2. See also F. Kortland (2003): An Indo-European substratum in Slavic?, in Languages in Prehistoric Europe, pp. 183-184.

⁷ R. Matasović (2013): Substratum words in Balto-Slavic, in Filologija 60, pp. 75-102.

The horse goes before the cart (updated)

Germanic *xursa/xrussa- 'horse' has been linked by some Indo-Europeanists to Latin currō 'to run'¹. This verb is derived from a Paleo-European lexeme *k^ər^əs- also reflected in Celtic *karro- and Latin currus 'cart'² < *k^ər^əs-o-. However, in chronological terms, the traditional view of deriving 'horse' from a verb 'to run' would be like putting the cart before the horse. That is, the meaning 'horse' has to be older than 'run' and not the other way around.  

In my opinion, the Paleo-European word would be related to East Caucasian *ʁHwo:r[tʃ^ʔ]o (˜ -tɕ^ʔ-,-ə) 'deer, game', probably dating from the Upper Paleolithic and the source  of Kurganic IE *jorko-³ (Celtic *jorko- 'roe deer (Capreolus capreolus)', Greek zórks, dórkas 'gazelle'), with metathesis. 

Possibly also Yeniseian *kuʔs 'horse' belongs here, as the names of domesticated animals are often Wanderwörter.

I also suspect this is the origin of the autochthnous name of the Pyrenean chamois (Rupicapra pyrenaica)⁴: Aragonese chizard(o), ixarzo, Gascon isar(t), idart, Catalan isard < *i-tsardV, with regular merger of sibilants /ts/ and /s/ in Gascon and Catalan and a prefix *i-, probably a fossilized article. There's also the unprefixed western variant *tsarri > Gascon sarri, Aragonés sarrio, the latter borrowed into Basque⁵.

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¹ G. Kroonen (2013): Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Germanic, pp. 260-261.

² Latin carrus is a Celtic (Gaulish) loanword.

³ Caucasian ʁ ~ Kurganic IE k and Caucasian tʃ ~ Kurganic IE j.

⁴ A species of mountain goat which lives in the Pyrenees, Cantabrian Mountains and the Apeninnes, considered to be a subspecies of the chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra) by some specialists.

⁵ The lack of a native Basque word for the animal can be explained from its absence from the Basque-speaking area.

Gaulish *agranio- 'sloe, fruit of the blackthorn' (updated)

Sloes

Occitan agranhon, Aragonese arañón, Catalan aranyó 'sloe, fruit of the blackthorn (Prunus spinosa)' < Gallo-Latin *agraniōne-, is a diminutive form borrowed from Gaulish *agranio-. The Gaulish word is also the source of Basque ar(h)an, which means 'sloe' in Biscayan¹ but 'plum' in other dialects, as well as the collective form arantza (B, G), arantze (L), arhantza (LN) 'thorn(bush)'.

A bottle of home-made patxaran

A popular liquor made from sloes is called patxaran (Spanish pacharán), a compound from pattar 'liquor' which coalesced (popular etymology) with the High Navarrese name of the fruit, a variant of ba(i)saran (G), baixaran (S), maisaran (R), basahan (Z), paxaran (HN, Aezk, R), a compound from basa- 'wild' and aran.

The corresponding form in Insular Celtic is *agriniā (Old Irish áirne, Welsh eirin), although phonetic differences make impossible to reconstruct a single Celtic protoform. IE cognates are Germanic *akarna-/*akrana-/*akirna- 'acorn'², Latin agresta 'green grape', agrestis and Greek ágrios 'wild', which have nothing to do with 'field' (Latin ager, Greek agrós) in despite of their resemblance.

Oak acorns

 
The scarce attestation within IE and the semantic latitude point to a Paleo-European substrate loanword which I'd link (with loss of the initial nasal) to Uralic *nakrV 'cedar nut'³, and possibly also to Altaic *ɲíkrV 'a k. of thorny tree', Eskimo *(Nǝ)k[r]uʁa- (~ *Nǝkǝvʁa-) 'tree, spruce'.

Cedar nuts (with and without shell)

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¹ The Gipuzkoan form is txaran. In these Westernmost dialects, 'plum' is okaran, apparently from an anaptyctic form *akarann.

² Pokorný conflated the Celtic and Germanic words with Lithuanian úoga 'berry', OCS (j)agoda 'fruit', vin-jaga 'grape', which are better linked to Latin ūva 'grape'.

³ The fruit of the Siberian pine (Pinus sibirica) or Swiss pine (Pinus cembra).

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) suerba, French 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.
⁵ M. Vasmer (1955): Russisches Etymologisches Wörterbuch, p. 697.

⁶ In fact, some Indo-Europeanists reconstruct a protoform *serbh- ~ *sorbh-.

Is really Tartessian a Celtic language? (newly updated)

When Koch's first book appeared in 2009 (the second edition came in 2013), launching his theory Tartessian was a Celtic language, I was enthusiastic. However, by the time he published his second book (2011) I had reached to the conclusion his interpretations were contrived as well as inconsistent.

A major difficulty regarding the Tartessian corpus is the semisyllabic SW script (where vowels are redundantly noted) hasn't yet been fully deciphered and thus the exact value of some signs is still unknown or problematic. For example, Koch assigns the sign H (Phoenician het, Greek epsilon) to the Proto-Celtic voicess bilabial fricative [ɸ] (almost universally lost in historical Celtic languages) coming from IE *p, as in e.g. Hatªaneatᵉe. However, the correspondence between Tartessian Haitᵘura¹ and Iberian baiduŕa², the later seemingly related to baides 'witness', in turn derived from IE *weid- 'to see; to know (as a fact)' (cfr. Celtiberian ueizos), points to the the value /w/ (Greek digamma).

If this is correct and the word is native to Tartessian, it would indicate it's an IE language although certainly a non-Celtic one. A good possibility would be the Paleo-European (after Krahe's Alteuropäische) substrate identified by the Spanish Indo-Europeanist Francisco Villar in the ancient Iberian toponymy, where we find the lexeme *akʷā 'river'³ (see here) used as a suffix (e.g. Turaqua).

Regardless of the actual filiation of Tartessian, it's clear it had contacts with other languages spoken in Western Iberia, namely Gallaecian (Celtic) and Lusitanian (non-Celtic). For example, the segment lokºobºo /lugu-bo/ closely mimicks Gallaecian LVGUBO /Lugubo/, LVCOVBV(S) /Lucoubo/, a dative plural theonym presumably referring to the gods Lug.

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¹ Translated by Koch as 'Lady of Baeturia'. See J.T. Koch (2011): The South-Western (SW) Inscriptions and the Tartessos of Archaeology of History, in Tarteso, El emporio del metal.

² The signs for rothics /r/ and /ŕ/ are reversed in the SW (Tartessian) and Southern Iberian scripts with regard to the Levantine one, upon which the usual transcriptions are based.
³ Not 'water' (cfr. Latin aqua) as commonly thought.