Re: About the word "spinster"

António Marques skreiv:

Brian M. Scott wrote:

Ranko Matasovic', 'An etymological lexicon of Proto-Celtic
(in progress)'.

Proto-Celtic: *glendos 'valley, shore' [Noun]
Old Irish: glend [s n]
Middle Welsh: glynn [m] 'glen, valley'
Middle Breton: glann 'shore'
Proto-Indo-European: *glend- 'shore' (?)
IE cognates: MLG klint, 'shore' ON klettr 'rock'
References: Pedersen I: 38

Deshayes (Dic. etym. du Breton) has two roots here:

Glann 'rive': c. glan, w. glan, pc. *glanno-
1499 _glann_

A bit odd that the word meaning "rive" is the one without the *d that became t in its Germanic cognates?

Glenn 'terre, pays, contree': w. glyn, g. gleann, pc *glend-
16th cent _glenn_

Could the initial *g in the word meaning "land" be (a remnant of) a prefix? No, surely that would be to simple.

As for 'glean' I don't know if this is of any relevance but there is a second match for OI <glen>:

Proto-Celtic: *gli-na- 'glue' [Verb]
Old Irish: glenaid, -glen; glieid, -glia [Subj.]; gíulaid, -gíulai [Fut.]; gíuil [Pret.]
Middle Welsh: glynu
Middle Breton: englenaff < *en-gli-na- 'stick'
Cornish: glena
Proto-Indo-European: *gleyH-
Page in Pokorny: 362
IE cognates: OHG klenan 'smear', Lith. dial. glejù 'smear'
References: KPV 337ff., LIV 190, LP 369, LEIA D-148

And one here:

Englenañ 'encoller': c. glena, w. glynu, oi. glenaid, pc. *glina-
1499 _englenaff_

Apparently nothing to do with 'glean'. But I came to remember that this semantic leap has been done in Germanic. English 'clean' is derived from the PIE root above.

The mentioned OHG strong verb <klinan> "smear" is connected to a PG root /*klain-/, which is also the origin of adjectives like English <clean> and German <kleine> "small". In ON there is a weak verb <klína> "smear" < /*kleinijan-/. This is a causative to /*klain-/.

If the stated meaning of the PIE root is correct the meaning of the strong verb early changed from "stick" through "make stick, glue" to "smear", presumably replacing the weak verb along the way. The meaning of the adjective changed from "sticky" through "greasy", "shining" and "delicate" to the various current meanings.

Could the suggested Celtic origin of 'glean' be the result of a similar development in meaning (or to an inherited duality in meaning), e.g. of a PC or PIE weak verb /**glei-n-ija-/? Of course this hypothesis would be stronger if there existed a related Celtic word meaning "clean" or "polished". Or if it was raised by someone who actually knows anything about the development of Celtic.

[Drifting off: Germanic roots starting with /*kl-/ have many descendants, e.g. English 'claw', 'clay', 'cleave', 'clew', 'climb', 'cling', 'cloth'. Some are deduced from the root /*klai-/, and some from other roots, but the dictionaries seem to disagree on the grouping. Among the proposed IE cognates of the different Germanic words are 'globe' "clay shaped to a ball?", and 'glyph', from a root meaning "carve". This probably is a stupid question, but wouldn't it all fit neatly into some PIE /**gl-e(H?)-/ "hand" or "work by hand"?]

My sources to the Germanic material:
Bjorvand and Lindeman: _Våre arveord_ Oslo, 2000
Hellquist: _Svensk etymologisk ordbok_ Lund, 1922
(<http://runeberg.org/svetym/index.htm>)
Svenska Akademiens Ordbok (SAOB) (<http://g3.spraakdata.gu.se/saob/>)

Any -- all -- misunderstandings or misrepresentations are my own.

Modern breton uses n-tilde to indicate the nasalisation of the preceding vowel. That nasalisation has 2 very different origins:

A - The result of /n/ before some consonants (s, S, Z...). Not the same in all dialects which means that each dialect may write n-tilde in different places.

B - One of the results of the /M/, some kind of fricative m. It evolved into [w], [v], nasal plus [v] or [w] and the latter occasionally into simple nasal. Which furthermore may simply disappear. All of this according to word and dialect. A well known case is the infinitive marker that we find here.

Is this connected to the similar development in French in some sort of (one-way) sprachbund?

(A) was historically written just <n>, and (B) was many things, one of which was <-w-> and <-ff>. Currently, nasality is always written n-tilde, which is very unfortunate since it represents neither etymolgy, nor morphology, nor dialect, nor phonemes actually (breton has a number of neutralisations and sandhi that are simply butchered by the current system, devised as it was by individuals that wished to reform and 'modernise' the traditional system but didn't always know what they were doing).

.... or did so with the intention of removing all orthographic conventions inherited from French, accidentally losing some very Breton features in the process?

In my upcoming orthographic reform proposal, n-tilde is done away with:

Seems reasonable. Good luck.


--
Trond Engen
- slow thinker, probably still too fast

.

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