Re: The Scythian Brothers

From: tgpedersen
Message: 11970
Date: 2002-01-02

--- In cybalist@..., "Piotr Gasiorowski" <gpiotr@...> wrote:
> Skt. lip- (limpati) 'smear, anoint, pollute' might perhaps work.
One would expect Proto-Iranian *rip- (I don't know if it's attested
in Iranian), with *ri- > *li- in the lambdicising dialect in
question. The underlying IE root is *leip- 'stick, adhere; fat' (as
in Slavic *le^piti), with fairly general and varied semantics. Even
Eng. life, live (< *li:b- < *leip-) are thought by many authors to
belong here, via something like 'stick' > 'stay, remain' [Goth. bi-
leiban, Germ. b-leiben] > 'live'. Somewhat paradoxically, Eng. leave
is a family member as well, being derived from the causative *laibjan-
< *loip-(e)je- 'cause to remain, leave behind'. I'm digressing, but
my purpose is to show the possible extent of semantic drift for such
a root.
>
> _Very_ hypothetically (using possible but purely conjectural forms
is hardly a sound method), one could imagine *ripa- (Skt. lipa-
'smearing', Greek lipos 'fat, tallow') with the derived
meaning 'soil' (via 'dirt, clay, sticky substance'. On the other
hand, Herodotus writes the name Lipoxais with <ei>, which suggests
[i:] in the Scythian prototype and I have no idea how to justify a
long vowel here.
>
> Piotr
>
Detschew: Die thrakischen Sprachreste:

"
-dava, -davon, -daba, -dábe:, -deba, -débai, -deva, -dabas, Deua- in
[and a lot of names of villages and towns]

WT. Thr II, 1 hat richtig erkannt, dass in der Hesychglosse <léba:
pólis hupò Thrako:n> das Wort <déba> zu <léba> entstellt ist. Demnach
ist der Grundelement mit WT. a.O. und Kretschmer Einl. 222 aus der
Wz. <dHe:-w->:<dH&-w-> "setzen, gründen" abzuleiten ... und
als "Sitz, Siedlung, Wohnort, offenes Dorf" zu deuten. ... dasselbe
Grundelement auch in dem lyk. ON <Hlmm~i-dewe>, bzw <Elmi-dauai>
"

but suppose the Hesychios quote was not distorted and this is a case
of d/l-alternation (if that is possible here)?
(One is also reminded of German <-leben> etc)

Torsten