On Sat, 03 Nov 2001 16:31:40 +0100, Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
<
mcv@...> wrote:
>On Sat, 3 Nov 2001 15:15:44 +0100, "Piotr Gasiorowski"
><gpiotr@...> wrote:
>
>>The actual Slavic reflex of PIE "one" is *inU, recycled semantically as "another, diferent". The original meaning survives in a couple of old compounds -- *ino-rogU 'unicorn' and *ino-xodU 'amble, lateral gait'.
>
>Ban'kowski proposes <in(n)y> "other" < inU < *oin-os.
>
>>It may be contained (as *-in-) in *edinU 'one' > *jedinU (with the variant *jedInU), East Slavic *odinU, though I don't know of a really convincing interpretation of *ed- (a locative particle like *e-dH(i)-?).
>
>There's Armenian <ez> "sole, one (Pol. jedyny)" (< *h1edh-o-) e.g. <ez
>te^r> "the one God". Alexis Manaster-Ramer once proposed a "vrddhi"
>form *e-dhH1 < *dheh1- "to put (together), assemble". But I have to
>go now. Details later.
Due to some kind of mental block, I forgot to mention *oin- > in-
"one" in my message about Slavic *oi just now. The general idea seems
to be that *oi gives -e^, except in some instances in the Auslaut,
where it gives -i (and which I hope to have reduced to just 1 case,
the nom.pl.). But what about the Anlaut? Do we get e^ > ja- or i-?
If we hold firm to /e^/, then Slav. /inU/ must be from *ein-o- (after
all, Lith. (v)ienas can also be < *(w)einos, leaving OP <ains> for
"further analysis") or, more promisingly, from Piotr's *oi-h1n-o-
(*aína- = /ai:na-/ > /i:na-/ ?). Just one question about the
semantics: correct me if I'm wrong, but *-h1en- is something like a
diminutive suffix, what could "little *oi-" have meant?
As to the prefix *edh-, I must say I don't like the so-called "vrddhi"
*dheh1 -> *edhh1, but perhaps a preverb *(h1)e- (~ *(h1)o-) as in
Greek o-ar "wife" (< "fitted together"), o-patros "from the same
father", o-trikhes (hippoi) "of similar manes", o-zdos "fellow
traveller" (< *sed- "sit/go"), etc. A verb *h1e-dhh1- "to put
together" might then perhaps be the basis of Grk. ethnos "people",
Arm. azn "people" (thus Bugge, pace Olsen), as well as to Arm. ez
"sole, one" and Slav. ed- in <edinU>. Following the
Greek-Armenian-Slavic connection, one is tempted to draw another
isogloss around Grk. ennea "9" (*h1(e)nnewa < *h1(e)dh-newm), Arm. inn
"9" (< *enun < *h1edh-newm) and Slav. *deven-tI (< *h1dh-newm-).