Re: Russian [eto] = "that" (demonstarative).

From: Sergejus Tarasovas
Message: 9658
Date: 2001-09-21

--- In cybalist@..., MCLSSAA2@... wrote:
> --- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> > *(h1)e- itself is a pronominal morpheme which combines quite
freely
> with other such elements (e.g. Russian eto < *(h1)e-tod), ...
>
> I have come across no Russian words starting in [e-] rather than
> [je-], except [eto] and recent loanwords. In PIE [H1ed-] = "eat"
and
> [H1esti] = "is", the [e-] pressnts in Russian as [je-]. I have a
good
> textbook of Old Slavonic, and it does not list [eto]. I suspect
that
> the [e-] in Russian [eto] arose in historic Russian times as a
> prefixed inarticulate emphatic noise.

Old Church Slavonic is a cultivated bookish version of some Old
Bulgarian dialects spoken in Macedonia (with, probably, some Moravian
elements). It's by no means an ancestor of Old Russian and differs
(sometimes significantly) from the latter in its vocabulary. Presence
or absence of a lexeme in OCS is of small relevance when considering
presence or absence of a lexeme in Old Russian.

<eto> is registered in Old Russian sources and has its reflexes not
only in Russian <e'to>, but in Ukrainian <ge'to> (with fricative [g])
and Belarussian <gEt'a> ({E} for open [e]).

This lexeme is indeed considered to be the only e-initial with the
prosthesis other than traditional [j]. Nearly all the auctores agree
that Old Russian spelling <eto> actually hides an alternative
prosthesis - [h] ([heto]), registered in Russian dialects, Ukrainian
and Belarussian (to some extent) and in a number of Old Russian
vaccilations like <uz^I> : <guz^I> 'tug, trace (such horse harness
element)' < *[huz^I] < Slavic *o,zjI. This prosthesis has probably
nothing to do with PIE *h1- which had disappeared long before.

Sergei