Re: [tied] Re: Sarmatian eggs

Benveniste says more or less this: "Perhaps it is also an old long diphthong that one ought to posit in the original form of aik, Digor aikæ 'egg', which would be *a:ikka-; I do not know if the Khwarezmian form ya:k can support this reconstruction, among the variants where *owyo- underwent differentiation in Iranian."

In other words, the Ossetic form is a little enigmatic and doesn't yield itself to historical analysis very easily, and Benveniste's Iranian reconstruction is only tentative. The thought that has crossed my head is that perhaps, to put it parabolically, when the Iranians would have omelettes, they bought eggs from their Slavic neighbours. At the time of Slavic/Iranian contacts the "egg" word was approximately *a:j-ik-a in Proto-Slavic (this diminutive formation is extremely popular throughout the branch). There are many loanwords borrowed in the other direction, but I've never heard of any suggested Slavicisms in Iranian. This might be an interesting example.

Piotr

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Subject: [tied] Re: Sarmatian eggs

To tell the truth, I'm not completely sure. "Etudes" is written in French which I don't speak. I used a French dictionary and struggled to make out what little I could. Here's the sentence from the book if you speak French or can have it translated: "Peut-être est-ce aussi une ancienne diphtongue longue qu'il faut mettre à l'origine de aik, dig. aikæ <<oeuf>>, qui serait *a:ikka-; je ne sais si la forme ya:k du khvarezmien peut appuyer cette restitution, parmi les variétés où *owyo- s'est différencié en iranien."
I wonder why there are so few traces of the word for "egg". Didn't the Aryans eat omelettes? -David --- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote: > > By the way, the PIE "egg" word has left surprisingly few traces in Indo-Iranian (none in Old Indic, as far as I know). How does Benveniste explain *a:ikka-? > > Piotr