Dear Alexander and all
As I have not quite had time to write up a description of
Charles Besnainou's "Spiramid" strings (I should be able to do so
soon). I would just like to return briefly to the etymology question,
and explain what I mean by safer or unsafe etymology:
I must insist that I was not saying that the 'caterpillar-gut"
etymology was necessarily any worse than any of the others that have
been cited recently. However, there are many chance similarities
between words that are not in fact related in any way, and sometimes
they just happe to have some meaning in common, without in fact being
related. Such cases, cannot be used as evidence in favour of a string
hypothesis, they must be considered anecdotal (although again that in
no way disproves the hypothesis).
A famous case of ideological etymology was the imagined relation
between the name Brutus and the name Britain and British.
"Brute of Troy is a legendary descendant of the Trojan hero Aeneas,
was known in medieval British legend as the eponymous founder and
first king of Britain."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brutus_of_Troy
If one simply relies on a similarity between words, there is a risk
of circularity: you find what you look for. As to "catgut" and
"catline", there are at least three hypotheses that are not soundly
based on linguistic arguments: "caterpillar-gut", "cattle-gut",
"catapult-gut", alongside simple "cat-gut" (I will suggest another
one later). Both caterpillar-gut and catapult-gut are an attempt to
support a theory of an original string type. Can we be sure that
either is safer than the "Brute" = "British" hypothesis.
(note that the cat in caterpillar (= feline), the cat in cattle
(derived from capital) and the cat in catapult (Greek Kata 'against')
are all of different origin, and have a chance first syllable in
common. This shows exactly how careful you need to be).
It is notoriously difficult to prove or disprove such analyses,
unless you can find some intermediary from, or an interesting variant
in some dialect.
For example, "cater" is in fact a "tom-cat", if we found an
intermediary form that was "cater-gut" the theory would be home and
dry. In French there is another form for caterpillar which is
chenille (or little dog), now if in some dialect of French we found
the expression, "boyau de chenille", again we could be pretty happy
for that hypothesis. Don't forget that the French expression is
"boyau de chat".
In English, the word for caterpillar could also have been
"catkin" (that is quite plausible, as a "catkin" is very much like a
hairy caterpillar: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
File:Ament_inflorescence.jpg
Now it would be easy to derive the English "cat-gut" from "cat-kin
gut", as in English very generally the unstressed element of such
forms can drop, so we might lose the intermediary "kin".
Nevertheless, if we could find just one example of "cat-kin gut" the
analysis would be safer.
Furthermore, how do we get the French form "boyau de chat".? Let us
suppose that in French, we also had the from "chaton" (small cat),
for caterpillar, so we would have "boyau de chaton". There is no
obvious reason why the last syllable would be lost, unless of course,
the caterpillar origin was forgotten, and French people just couldn't
believe that the gut came from a small cat, and so they just called
it "boyau de chat" (but we would prefer it to have been a typical
French phonetic process, loss of the final unstressed syllable. That
is common in English, but not quite so in French, although we do have
"chef" derived from "caput" so it remains a possibility).
I agree with Alexander that "cattle-gut" is no safer (remember that
cattle comes from "capital"). It is easy to obtain "cat-gut" by the
loss of the weak syllable in English, but it is a pity we have no
example of the full item, "cattle-gut".
Now how do we get "boyau de chat" from this. In Modern French the
equivalent word is "cheptel", but through English we know that there
was also an old form "chattel" (which we still have with a slightly
different meaning in English"). So now how do we get "boyau de chat"
from ""boyau de chattel"?, Why don't we have a variant that is "boyau
de cheptel"?
One might just as well suppose that "catgut" and "boyau de chat" were
ironical remarks about the way most musicians played on the things,
"catawailing". I don't actually, think this is so.
Now I am not saying that any of the above etymologies are mistaken,
they are just not sound. Perhaps, new discoveries may make them sound.
Just to mention two safer etymologies, relating to strings:
"Minikin" is now believed to mean from Munich. This is not just
because Mace mentions Minikin alongside Venice and Pistoy, and that
"minikin" vaguely resembles Munchen. There are two other almost
identical forms in English but of completely diferent orin, one from
Latin Mini+kin, and one from Dutch. This is the more interesting :
mini·kin noun, 1. Obsolete a darling, 2. Rare anything very small
and delicate Etymology: MDu minneken, dim. of minne, love: see
minnesinger
Of course, one could easily suppose a minikin string meant "something
small and delicate" and so from the Dutch origin.
However, fortunately, Dowland's use of the from "monikin" , allows us
to see how this form could have been derived from "monachen" (the
origin of Munchen, meaning monastery, and related to the word
monachus, "monk"). It is due to the "o" vowel that the analysis is
fairly safe.
Note that we do have an old process in English of umlaut: monastery,
is the origin of Minster.
However, it may be that the two words "sort of merged" and that by
the time of Mace the string could have been from Munchen, but also
"small and delicate". Yet Mace himself says this was not so. They are
so strong they cut into your hand, so we can be fairly sure of the
munchen origin.
Nevertheless, we should beware even here about taking the etymology
too literally. The origin is form Munich, but does that mean the
string was actually from Munich. It could be that all samll strings
were called Munichs, just as at one time all vacuum cleaners were
called hoovers.
Just notice what Americans call a robbin. The origin is clearly the
word we find in UK English:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Turdus-migratorius-002.jpg
So we must not read too much even into a "safe etymology".
While talking about strings and rope, for a layman deriving English
"Hemp" and French "chanvre" from a Greek form for Cannabis, must seem
much more exotic than the caterpilar-gut hypothesis, but not so for a
linguist. This is considered a very safe etymology, just because of
the number of phonetic processes involved, all backed up by similar
changes in other words: For the English, Kanabis > hemp, we see the
regular "First Germanic consonant shift" : kanabis > hanapis (just
like Kardia > heart), hanapis > henep through Anglo-saxo i/j-umlaut
(just like manniz gives men), henep: giving "henep", and unstressed
vowel dropping gives "hemp" (just like OE emmet gave ant). French in
the south of France we have the older form Canebière which gives
central French "Chanvre " by regular palatalization of K before /a/
(just as in chateau, etc.)
An excellent text book relating to this, is Historical Linguistics
and Language Change by Roger Lass, CUP.
Regards
Anthony
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