Re: Etymological Help Needed


"Robert Rosen" <rosen647@xxxxxxx> wrote ...
>
> [...]
>
> Thanks very much for the interesting analysis, and please forgive my
> continued ignorance. But perhaps you or someone else could tell me why
> the AHD does not attribute the Latin etymon "bulla" of Sp. "bola" and
> French "boule" 'ball' to *bhel- , while suggesting that L. "ballena"
> 'whale' may have come from *bhel-.

PIE *bh- regularly yields Latin f- in inherited words. The best explanation
of Latin <ballaena> 'whale' is that it is an indirect loanword from Greek
<phallaina> by way of Messapic, a language of the Illyrian group. Another
possible example of a Greek-Messapic-Latin loanword is <galbanum> 'resinous
sap of a Syrian plant'; the Greek form is <khalbane:>, itself borrowed from
Semitic (cf. Hebrew <Helbna:h>). In both presumed cases, Messapic has
rendered a Greek initial aspirate by the corresponding voiced stop, and then
passed the new consonantism on to Latin.

Now, one possible etymology of Greek <phallaina> 'whale' is derivation from
PIE *bhel- 'to blow', from the whale's habit of spouting, but I am not
particularly convinced: to me (and the AHD editors) it is only a _possible_
etymology. And I fault the AHD editors for not mentioning that <ballaena>,
if it indeed comes from PIE *bhel-, must be an indirect loan from Greek, not
an inherited word.

As for the root *beu- to which the AHD assigns Latin <bulla> and a few
others, the fact that a "variant" *bheu- is cited raises a red flag. Since
*b is quite rare in PIE (even denied by some scholars), it seems most
plausible to me to regard *bheu- as the true PIE form of this root, and
<bulla> to be a Latin borrowing from a pre-Italic branch of Indo-European
(probably, again, part of the Illyrian group) in which PIE voiced aspirates
regularly became voiced stops. (The Germanic words assigned by the AHD to
PIE *beu-, not *bheu-, constitute a mixed bag which do not convincingly
point to a common root.)



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