From: João S. Lopes Filho
Message: 7612
Date: 2001-06-13
----- Original Message -----
From: Glen Gordon <glengordon01@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Wednesday, June 13, 2001 6:47 AM
Subject: [tied] Thanatos and Vanth
>
> Piotr on my suggestion of the origin of Etruscan Vanth from
> *wenakte (> Myc. /wanax/):
> >Understandable, perhaps. But where's the evidence? A semantic >sequence
> >like "ruler" -> "powerful deity" -> "deity of war" -> "deity of death" is
> >no doubt imaginable -- that's hardly a problem. In fact, any number of
> >similar chains could be imagined.
> >The real problem is how to constrain the imagination, so that it
> >will not produce mirages.
>
> Yes, indeed. How might we constrain the imagination, so that it
> does not produce mirages like *gWmti- in /basileus/ :) I'm sure
> you realise that I could turn your words against you and ask
> _you_ where the evidence of your interpretation is.
> There isn't an issue with the first half *gWmti-, nor with the
> second half since they both are found in other IE languages as
> you say, however you are still exercising much freedom too.
>
> We don't see this particular compound outside of Hellenic and
> syllabic *m isn't really attested but rather implied from -a-.
> Any underlying IE form could just as well have a syllabic *n,
> *a or *x (*H2).
>
> >She has absolutely no royal or military attributes -- nothing to
> >suggest that her original function was that of a "ruler" or "chief".
>
> Alright, alright. I'll give it some thought.
>
> >The final -u in <Aplu> reflects Greek -o:(n). Gk. -os, like Lat.
> >-us, would have become -e in classical Etruscan, and given the
>variability
> >of Greek-to-Etruscan orthographic correspondences [...] as well as inner
> >Etruscan variation [...] one would expect >anything like *Tvante,
*Thvante
> >or *Tvanthe for Thwánatos (with
> >the etymological digamma still there!).
>
> Or even *Pvante, *Phvance, *Catha or *Niphu, perhaps. Uh-hmm...
> shouldn't you be heeding your words above. I still don't see any
> initial dental of any kind in the name Vanth, nor could it be
> accomplished by any process I know of in Etruscan or pre-Etruscan
> but I suppose the following fix is supposed to explain that...
>
> >My scenario is as follows: since the final -e was characteristic of
> >masculine names, the change of sex that the deity underwent in >Etruscan
> >produced "genderless" *Tvanth, while the initial cluster -- presumably
felt
> >to be "foreign" in terms of Etruscan >phonotactics -- was simplified to
v-.
>
> Something tells me that /thui/ or /thuves/ might be relevant.
> I presume you are speaking of a reconstructable pre-Etruscan.
> If there was any such constraint in pre-Etruscan, one should
> still expect *Tuvanth or even *Tanth, if labial phonemes truely
> made early Etruscan ears bleed so much. There is still no process
> aside from mythical analogy that could have caused an abnormal
> loss of *t-, nor is there another case of such a phenomenon
> (or is there?). Second of all, is Vanth even spelled any other
> way such as *Vanath, *Vanathe, or the like? While you are
> (as I am) positing a missing second *a and final vowel
> without direct evidence, the missing *t really throws this all
> over the edge.
>
> In all, I think this means that your *Tvanth is just as weak and
> unsubstantiable as my Tyrrhenian *wenakte and that you are
> committing all the evil sins that I am :P Gives a whole new
> meaning to Devil's Advocate.
>
> - gLeN
>
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