Re: [tied] Basileus

You are right. My morphological cutting of -vention- was
faulty. However, I'd dispute your claim that the meaning of
Latin venio is general. The usual senses are "come, arrive,
draw near, approach, return", and figurative meanings in
phrases like <venio in periculum> or <res venit ad manus>
confirm this. Germanic cognates (including <come>) confirm
this meaning, and the Baltic sense "be born" is an extension
of "come", not "go". I find it more plausible that Greek and
Indo-Iranian have generalised the term than that it became
independently specialised (with the same results) in several
branches.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: "petegray" <petegray@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, June 09, 2001 1:38 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] Basileus


> Rarely do I have the temerity to disagree with Piotr, but
I must on two
> counts here.
>
> > underlying *gWm-ti- is implied by such forms as
Latin -venti-on-
>
> Surely Latin -vention- is actually vent-ion as in
supine/ppp stem + the very
> productive morph -ion-, which forms nouns from verbs, and
is normally
> attached to the ppp/spine stem. (There are a very few
words with -ion- on
> the bare stem, eg pug-ion-, reg-ion-, opin-ion-. The
suffix -ion- is not to
> be confused with the suffix -io/-ia which gives 1st and
2nd declension
> words).
>
> > The general meaning 'walk, go, proceed' of Greek baino:
(< *gWm-je-) is >
> apparently a late extension of a more concrete PIE meaning
('come,
> > approach'), implying movement towards the speaker
>
> I'd like to dispute this, too. In Latin the meaning is
general, without
> implication of movement toward the speaker; you yourself
allow that is also
> the case in Greek; in Sanskrit it can mean "go away" in
the RV and later
> literature, and even "send away"; (meanings such as "go
to" are indicated
> by the presence of an acc, loc, or dat.). Where is the
evidence that its
> PIE meaning implied movement toward the speaker?
>
> So your etymology still has some problems, I think.
>
> Peter