Daughter ~ Maiden ~ Maidservant: Dynamics of Semantic Shift from Continental Celtic to Insular Celtic Vocabulary (original) (raw)

Studia Celto-Slavica, 2012

Abstract

The old Indo-European word for ‘daughter’ (*dhugH [Szemerenyi 1977: 21] or *dhuĝ(h₂)-tḗr [Mallory, Adams 2006: 472]) survives in all major branches of daughter-languages except Albanian, Italian (but cf. Osc. futír?) and Insular Celtic. OI der ‘daughter, girl’ and der- in compound names represents a reduced form of old I.-E. word [O’Brien 1956: 178], “an allegro-form” [Matasović 2009: 110]. Continental Celtic has a well-known Gaulish duxtir (Larzac tablet) and Celtiberian TuaTe[r]es/TuaTeros (Bottorita inscription II) supposed to have the same old I.-E. meaning ‘daughter’ (?, cf. ‘jeune fille initiée’ [Lejeune 1985: 133], cf. also [Sims-Williams 2007: 3]). At the same time, another I.-E. term for ‘girl, woman’ is also attested and even widely used in Gaulish: *ġenh₁ ‘bear, generate’ [IEW: 373 ff.] > Gaul. geneta, genata, gneta, nata [Delamarre 2003: 177, 181] with supposed meaning ‘young girl, young woman, servant (?)’. Cf. also Osc. genetaí ‘daughter’. Insular Celtic conserved t...

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