On Sun, 04 Nov 2001 02:35:25, "Glen Gordon" <
glengordon01@...>
wrote:
>>An old story, which I don't believe.
>
>Unfortunately for you, *pxte:r < *pax- + -te:r remains the most
>convincing explanation for the root.
I think an explanation that starts with the universal (OK,
universal-except-for-Georgian :-) *pa(:) and *ma(:) is much more
plausible.
I'm not aware of any parallels anywhere of the word for "father" being
derived from "feeder, provider", although I'm not excluding the
possibility that there are.
>>For one thing, by your
>>"final vowel" rule, all IE suffixes should be split in two (e.g.
>>the suffix *-men, as in dáimo:n and the suffix *-mene, as
>>in poimé:n), without any difference in meaning between them.
>
>Yes, when used blindly. If we used Grimm's Law blindly, we might
>fail to see connections that are established by Verner's Law
>or by irregular, analogical changes. Luckily some of us aren't
>that daft.
>
>To answer your question about *-mn/*-mén,
Actually, it wasn't about *-mn/*-mén, that was just an example.
The question was about *any* IE suffix [ending in *m, *n, *r, *l, *y,
*w]. Reformulated: how do you explain the distinction between the
amphidynamic and hysterodynamic declensions?
=====================================================================
To come back to "father", "mother", etc., the key is the suffix
*-h2ter. It doesn't comply with the usual structure of PIE suffixes,
which to me suggests that it's ancient rather than that it's recent.
Now one thing that we might expect in kinship terms is the retention
of otherwise vanished (inalienable) possession affixes, especially, of
course, first person singular ones: "my dad", etc. We have two 1sg.
suffixes in PIE, *-m and *-h2, so chances are that the *h2 in *-h2-ter
is indeed the 1sg. suffix *-h2. *-ter is then obviously not the
agentive suffix, but probably the "binary" suffix *-ter (Lat. al-ter,
Eng. o-ther, comparative *-tero-, Lat. mater-tera "mother's sister",
*kWo-ter-o- "which (of two)", etc.). *pa:-h2+ter would then have been
used as "my father (as opposed to yours)" or, more likely, "my father
among fathers" = "my real father" (in the context of an extended
family where the unadorned term "father" (**pa:, **pa:-h2) may also
have been used for paternal or maternal uncles and other senior family
members). Similarly for "mother" (**ma:-h2+ter), "brother"
(**bhra:-h2+ter), etc. [I'm tentatively reconstructing long **pa:,
**ma:, **bhra: to explain the static inflection].
So why the distinction between *máh2-t(o:)r, *bhráh2-t(o:)r on the one
hand, and *ph2-té:r and *dhughh2-té:r on the other? Well, unlike
*pa(:), *ma(:) and even *bhra(:), *dhugh doesn't look much like a
nursery word. In fact, it's easy to recognize in it the root *dheugh-
"to milk". So the analogy worked the other way around: *dhugh-té:r
"she who draws milk", with the hysterodynamic variant of the agentive
suffix *-ter, was drawn into the semantic sphere of kinship
terminology (> *dhugh-h2-té:r) and then dragged along *páh2to:r
reinterpreted as an agentive "provider, feeder" (> *ph2-té:r). This
would also explain why the "mother" word has taken the N. from the
"father" word (*-te:r, for expected *-to:r [cf. Grek. phrá:to:r]),
while "father" has, in Old Indic, the G.sg. or the A.pl. from the
"mother" word (Skt: pitúr after matúr < *máh2trs, pitr.:n after
ma:tr.:n < *máh2trns): the two paradigms were originally one.