Stifter, David (2020) Old Irish lobur ‘weak, sick’. Zeitschrift fur Celtische Philologie, 66 (1). pp. 177-178. ISSN 0084-5302

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Abstract

Old Irish lobur‘weak, sick; leprous’ is cognate with Welshl lwfr‘cowardly,timid, faint-hearted; mean; idle’, Cornish lover, Middle Breton loffr, Modern Breton lovr‘weak, miserly, leprous’. The common notion linking these words semantically is ‘weak’. Because of the voca lism of the Welsh word, the Proto-Celtic reconstruction *lobro-, proposed in earlier scholarship (VGKSi 116‒17,Deshayes 2003: 477), is excluded: Proto-Celtic (PC) *oappears asoin all British-Celtic languages (SchRijveR 1995: 26), except for certain nasal contexts and before *RC‒ neither of which is applicable here ‒, where it is raised tou<w>in Welsh (SchRijveR 1995: 27‒44, 52–68); PC *u, on the other hand, is retain edasu<w> in Welsh, but yields oin Cornish and Breton (SchRijveR 1995: 26‒7),precisely the distribution found in this etymon. Theoof OIr.loburis due to the regular lowering of PC *u>o before a non-high back vowel (McCone 1996: 110). The voiced labial fricative evidenced in the individual languages can continue Proto-Celtic *bor *φ. The former is the reflex of Indo-European *bh, *gu̯and the marginal sound *b(McCone 1996: 42‒3; Stifter 2017: 1189‒90), whereas the latter continues word-internal Indo-Euro pean *p before a liquid (McCone1996: 44; Stifter 2017: 1190)

Item Type:	Article
Keywords:	Old Irish; lobur; weak; sick; Chronologicon Hibernicum;
Academic Unit:	Faculty of Arts & Humanities > School of Celtic Studies > Early Irish (Sean Ghaeilge)
Item ID:	12887
Identification Number:	https://doi.org/10.1515/zcph-2019-0007
Depositing User:	Prof. David Stifter
Date Deposited:	07 May 2020 09:21
Journal or Publication Title:	Zeitschrift fur Celtische Philologie
Publisher:	Walter de Gruyter
Refereed:	Yes
Funders:	European Research Council
URI:	Publisher
Use Licence:	This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here

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