Lombardo alpino ˹bréncul, brén(s)ciol, brìnsc(en), brìnscet˺ ‘ginepro’: una geolinguistica d’altri tempi

The Alpine Lombard (Ticino and Ossola) lexical type ˹bréncul, brén(s)ciol, brìnsc(en), brìnscet˺ &c. ‘juniper’ exhibits an uncommonly conspicuous diatopic variation—57 local forms, together with 30 Alpine Romance and 8 Slavonic comparanda. A strict processing of diachronic phonological transformations from Proto-Indo-European to Common and Old (Continental) Celtic (the area’s only verified substrate) and from Proto-Romance to modern Alpine Lombard varieties yields a reduction of the 95 items to 35 Proto-Indo-European primary, secondary, or compound formations on a single root (√*bʱrĕn‑ ‘to jut out, corner, edge, tip, point’ → root extensions √*bʱrĕn‑k‑, √*bʱrĕn‑g‑), beside one different etymon and two ambivalent cases. On the other hand, about twenty roughly synonymous semi-homophones can be assigned to fourteen different Proto-Indo-European roots; traces of lexical redundancy at Proto-Indo-European level and until the immediately Pre‑Roman Celtic — Lepontic / Gaulish — substrate can still today be recovered, under the same epistemological procedure which is assured for the linguistic Prehistory of any other Indo-European genetic axis.