Bibliographical Addenda

To the basic bibliography for Germanic given on pg. 11,  fn. 5 add:


For Old Saxon: Tieffenbach 2010


For Old Frisian: Hofmann and Popkema 2008


For Old Netherlandic: http://gtb.inl.nl/?owner=ONW


Hofmann, Dietrich, Anne Tjerk Popkema, and Gisela Hofmann. 2008. Altfriesisches 
Handwörterbuch. Heidelberg: Universitätsverlag Winter.


Tiefenbach, Heinrich. 2010. Altsachsisches Handworterbuch: a Concise Old Saxon Dictionary. Berlin: De Gruyter.

New Companion to the Latin Language

I see that Google Books now has significant sections of the soon to be released A Companion to the Latin Language edited by James Clackson.  It's a little difficult to tell the complete contents from what is available there, but I can see the following: Rex Wallace has a chapter on "The Latin alphabet and Orthography"; James Clackson has written on "Latin Inscriptions and Documents" and "Inflectional Morphology". Matthew McCullaugh wrote the chapter "The Sound of Latin: Phonology". Ben Fortson contributed "Latin Prosody and Metrics".  I look forward to reading the whole thing, which undoubtedly will be a valuable addition to the literature. Clackson 2011 should be added to the resources listed on pg. 15 fn. 34

Correction pg. 365

On pg. 365 change the gloss of simul from 'once', which in the meaning 'as soon as' is rarely attested for simul, to 'in company with, at the same time'.

Typo pg. 364, fn. 4

On pg. 364, fn. 4 the last name of the great Celticist should be not Green, but (David) Greene.

Correction pg. 138

On pg. 138  I write that an e becomes i "in an open syllable before an i in a following syllable".  This formulation works for the first two examples (cinis < *kenis and sine < *seni) but it doesn't work for the second two examples (similis < *semlis and vigilis < *weglis) because these do not contain e in an open syllable. It might be better to assume *semilis > similis, but one would then have explain the survival of e in other forms in -ilis.  This doesn't seem to be too hard to do: senilis, which has a long medial i, can be analogical to senex. Some, like Leumann, think this assimilation mainly operated over sonorants other than r. Additional examples of this sort would be milium 'millet' (cf. Gk. μελίνη) and tilia 'lime-tree' (cf. Gk. πτελέα 'elm-tree').

Correction pg. 417

On pg. 417 the 1st sg. optative active of Ved. bhar- should be bhareyam not bhareya, which is the 1st sg. middle.

Clarification on Lat. ā in Early Loanwords into Celtic

On pg. 508, fn. 36 I mention the view of Kenneth Jackson that early Latin loanwords into Celtic accurately reflect the distinction between Latin long and short a and in this regard would preserve evidence for a distinction that the direct Romance tradition never maintains. But reading Loporcaro's masterful essay in the Cambridge History of the Romance Languages has made me realize that I did not cite the crucial evidence and that even that is not very clear. Loporcaro argues convincingly that short vowels were lengthened in stressed open syllables quite early in the proto-Romance period (which means that the rest of fn. 36 also needs some revision).  Hence the cited pair MW caws, OIr. cáisse 'cheese' from Latin cāseus vs. OIr. clann 'family' from Lat. planta is not conclusive evidence for the preservation—a fact which Jackson was well aware of.  What is needed to make the case would be instances of old loans with accented short a in an open syllable represented with a Celtic short a and conversely loans with a long a in a closed syllable represented with a Celtic long a.  Off the top of my head I don't know of any examples of the latter sort, but Russell 1984 cited W ffa < faba and gradd < gradus as examples of the former type.  These, however, are far from sealing the deal.  Note that Irish has grád (o, n. Wb. etc.) with Open Syllable Lengthening and the fairly inexplicable seib for faba (s for f is normal in early loans but the e, which Thurneysen derived from a British pl. *feib < *fabī, is problematic since the word is feminine in British). More research required.

Update: Anders points out the case of Welsh mawrth 'March; Tuesday' <— Lat. ma:rt-. So it is pretty clear that long a in a closed syllables was still distinctive at the time of the Celtic borrowings.  Irish has márta 'March' which the DIL suggest might be a reinterpreted genitive of an i-stem Máirt < Ma:rtius, apparently not actually attested in the meaning March. NYC guy has inspired me to replace the bean picture with a true old world variety, fava beans.