Newsgroups: sci.lang
Path: cantaloupe.srv.cs.cmu.edu!das-news2.harvard.edu!news2.near.net!howland.reston.ans.net!EU.net!sun4nl!mcv
From: mcv@inter.NL.net (Miguel Carrasquer)
Subject: Re: Question on Romance lexicon
Message-ID: <Cz5H50.10u@inter.NL.net>
Organization: NLnet
References: <39qt37$nce@fs7.ece.cmu.edu> <Cz0EKn.AKz@news.cern.ch> <1994Nov11.130530.31000@dbsoftware.com> <3a15um$ba4@fs7.ece.cmu.edu>
Date: Sat, 12 Nov 1994 10:29:24 GMT
Lines: 27

In article <3a15um$ba4@fs7.ece.cmu.edu>,
Marcelo Bruno <bruno@ece.cmu.edu> wrote:
>
> If you don't mind, I have another question. I quite understand Port ca~o
>(Eng dog)  related to Lat canem, but what about Cat gos or Sp perro ?
>Where do these words come from?
>

I don't know.  The best source for both Spanish and Catalan etymologies
are Joan Coromines' dictionaries, which I unfortunately do not own.
I looked up "perro" once in the "Diccionario Cri'tico Etimolo'gico
de la Lengua Castellana" and the origin is basically unknown.
Because of the "rr", some people have suggested an Iberian or other
Pre-Roman source, but there is no proof of that.  As a matter of fact,
the word is not found in the earliest texts (which use `can').  It's
possible that a pre-Roman word survived in some local dialect, and was
not adopted in general speech until the fifteenth century (or whenever it
was, Coromines will tell you).  Another theory states that the word
is derived from "prrr", or some such, used by shepherds to call their
dogs.  Likelier, I think.

I don't know about "gos".  Probably a nickname, too.  

-- 
Miguel Carrasquer         ____________________  ~~~
Amsterdam                [                  ||]~  
mcv@inter.NL.net         ce .sig n'est pas une .cig 
