Talk:parricus

Germanic -> Latin or vice-versa?

@Victar:

Von Wartburg argues that:

'It is obviously a Late Latin derivative from *parra "pole, post", the meaning of which was more or less "made of posts". This parricus was borrowed early on into Germanic, hence Old High German pfarrih, Middle High German pferrich, Swiss German pfärrich, German pferch, Middle Low German perk, Lorraine German and Hessian perch, Rhine-ish perich, Westphalian perk, pirk, parchem, Middle Dutch parric, perric, Dutch park, Old English pearroc, English parrock; from French came the Breton park 'field'. It is not possible to start from Germanic and regard the Romance words as borrowings from there, above all because of the initial /p/, but also because the suffix is of Latin origin.'

Thoughts? Nicodene (talk) 20:50, 22 May 2023 (UTC)

@Nicodene, if this was an early Germanic borrowing, you would think it'd be better attested in Latin, instead of being first found in a Frankish document. Although, Germanic #p- is exceedingly rare outside of loanwords, there seems to be a Germanic term for “beam, bar” that fluctuated as *barō ~ *sparrô (whence *sparrijaną (“to bar, block”)), and this could be a variant of that, affixed with the diminutive suffix *-ukaz. Note too that we have Vulgar Latin *barra (“bar, barrier”), again of unknown origin. That all being said, might as well mention it in the etymology as an alternative derivation. --{{victar|talk}} 07:04, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

@Victar Alright. Perhaps both etymologies on both entries, then.

As for parricus first being attested in a Frankish legal document, that's rather common for new terms in the early medieval period, even undoubtedly Latin ones (cf. fraxinetum, impeioro, impromutuo, lignamen; or the series capraricius–palearicius–porcaricius–vaccaricius). Most surviving Latin texts from the sixth or seventh centuries, and nearly all of them afterwards, were produced in areas controlled by one Germanic ruler or another, and a majority of said texts were concerned with legal or religious matters. Nicodene (talk) 15:42, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

@Nicodene, early medieval period Latin would track for Proto-West Germanic, but not Proto-Germanic. --{{victar|talk}} 18:59, 23 May 2023 (UTC)

@Victar I see. Is it implausible for the North Germanic outcomes to have been borrowed from West Germanic? Nicodene (talk) 04:19, 24 May 2023 (UTC)