Re: Preparing for a rainy day [was: Bog]

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> I suggest that *dus-dju- may be a loan from Indo-Iranian -- a

branch

> in which such a compound exists (plus a number of similar

formations,

> e.g. Rigvedic su-div-, su-dyu-t-). The fact that neither *dus- nor
> *diw-/*dju- are independently attested in Slavic is therefore no
> obstacle. They are found in the hypothetical source of the loan.

What I was arguing against is the statement that *dUz?jI etymologized
in a Trubetskoi/Vaillant fashion is genuinely Slavic. A borrowing is
a quite possible solution, in my opinion. Considering the fact I am
not aware of existance of *su- in Baltic as well (*dur-, by the way,
if treated as a variant of *dus-, is probably attested in Slavic as
*dur- < *dour-, like in *durInU 'bad'?), I'm beginning to suspect all
the *su- complex (and *dus-, if *dUz?jI indeed contains it) in Slavic
being borrowed from Indo-Iranian (or -Aryan?). It might well be Indo-
Iranians who taught Slavs the idea of proper (sacral?) death (in the
battle-field, for instance).

>The
> inherited Indo-European word for `rain' was lost in Slavic anyway,
> perhaps replaced by a borrowed euphemism. By the time Russian folk
> rhymes were composed, nobody was aware of the etymology of *dUzdjI,
> so the rhymer you quote promises to feed the rain as an elemental
> force, not a bad day.

My example was just a typological one, Russian being chosen just
because it's much more convenient for me to use my native language as
a source for such rhymer.

> As for the evidence of a *-u-stem, I can quote Russ. doz^devoj and
> archaic Polish dz*dz*ewy/dz*dz*owy `rainy' < *dUzdjevU- (hence
> dz*dz*ownica `earthworm').
>

Polish is out of my competence here, but in Russian -ov-/-ev- suffix
is generalized to such an extent that it definitely can't witness -u-
stem.
Nearly every -(j)o-stem noun can form -ov-/-ev- derivatives. Cf.
polevoj, stolovyj, gorodovoj, bojevoj etc etc. By the way, strictly
speaking, Russian doz^devoj look's relatively young, as it just can't
reflect *dUzdjevU- (or *dUzgjevU-). Cf. genuinely-looking droz^z^evoj
(not **droz^devoj).

Sergei

Sergei