Re: [tied] Re: About the etymology of *nepo:t- "nephew/grandson"

----- Original Message -----

From: Miguel Carrasquer Vidal

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Monday, January 15, 2001 6:22 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Re: About the etymology of *nepo:t- "nephew/grandson"

> Nie powinienes watpic.  It'd have to be a form with skeleton
*ne-C(V)C, and a quick look in Pokorny yields only one such.  A nice
one though: *nekwt-/*nokwt-, "obviously" from *ne- and *kw(e)it- "to
observe, to see" [half a :-)].

 

Let me carry on entertaining my doubts. Since when does *ne alternate with **no-? (English and Spanish ""obviously"" don't count).

> You know I reconstruct *pot-n^- (i/n-stem).  There are forms without -i or -n in compounds (e.g. Latin com-pos), and in the emphatic particle *-pot (attested in Hittite and elsewhere).  From a semantic point of view, "powerful" would indeed be *potn^-, with an adjectival extension.  The simplex *pot- could be "power, might".

"Could be" is no substitute for such a word with such a meaning. Latin is notorious for reducing old *-ti- stems (*mntis, *mnteis > mens, mentis). Hittite pat may or may not belong here, but in either event it's an emphatic particle, not a noun meaning "power". Since Szemerényi demolished Benveniste's analysis of ipse, etc., scholars have been reluctant to talk of PIE *pot- 'power + lotsof other stuff'. To play the devil's advocate, I will admit that *pot-n-ih2- does contain *pot-n-, but here we are talking more concretely about "master" and "mistress", not about "power". Words like "mistress" wear off easily because of their frequent use as forms of address (> "Mrs", and likewise in innumerable languages), so *poti-nih2- > *potnih2- is a very likely development.

 

 

Piotr