Re: [tied] Thracian -Satem

----- Original Message -----

From: alexmoeller@...

To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com

Sent: Sunday, July 14, 2002 12:29 PM

Subject: Re: [tied] Thracian -Satem

> [moeller] why should be it the meaning "town"? It is generally assumed to be town by which considerations? we have there some derivations of that word "dava" supposed to be in several forms because of the dialectal character of the dacians tribes. So we have "dava, deva, daba, dama". Is this normal that in *dHeh1 the "h1" to generate for the same folk sufixes like "ama", "ava", "aba","ama"?

 

Well, its distribution in placenames suggest that. "Such-and-such Dava" was the most common town-naming pattern in Dacia. The actual suffix is *-w- (phonetically [-v-], I suppose, hence the <-v-> ~ <-b-> hesitation in ancient sources), and the root is <da:-> from *de:- < *dHeh1- (the merger of *a: and *e: also happened in Albanian and in a slightly different way in Greek dialects). *h1 was a very weak consonant or glide lost in a very remote past; it caused the preceding vowel to lengthen. *dHeh1-wo- would have given Dac. da:va (*-wo- is a rather common formative suffix in IE). <-dama> is known from Thrace only and it's impossible to tell if it's related to <-dava> at all. If it is, it may be a different derivative, *dHeh1-mo-.

 

> Even the old name of the Odrissians capital "Odryssia" was first , before the greek camme, Uscudama , in my opinion once again a confirmation of Dio Cassius that the thracians was a branche of getae and not as common accepted , the thtracina is the big family which include the getae.

 

I view them as two different Satem branches, not necessarily forming a genetic unit. I (tentatively) agree with those who see Dacian/Getic as related to Albanian and Thracian as a more distant relative.

 

> But these "diza" is really thracian? I make a comparation on the Duridanov maps and i see that the thracians towns were in "para" and "bria". So in this case , which one is meaning "town"? para, bria or diza? I ask it because as we see on the maps the localities with the sufiex "diza" are very few and with the exception of "Kistidizos" all of them are located in the region of Bosphorus, meaning very south of the thracian . Do you have any explanation of these points?

 

Georgiev maps eleven <-diza/-dizos> names, also in central Thrace (Orudiza, Cistidizos, Tarpodizos). There may have been some regional preferences, perhaps reflecting different local conditions. If its etymology is anything to go by, <-diza> means 'fort, enclosure'. <bria> < *wrijah2 has cognates in Tocharian (A ri, B riye 'town'), and in Greek (rHion 'jutting part of a hill, headland'), and perhaps meant something like 'hill-fort'. The most common element <-para>, which must have meant something rather commonplace like 'village, settlement', has no certain etymology. Duridanov's *(s)pora: is hardly a good idea in my opinion, but I can't offer a really convincing alternative. The comparison with Gk. poros 'ford, passage' would work formally, but doesn't explain its great frequency.

 

That all three are found in Thrace is hardly surprising. For a neat analogy, compare English <-ton>, <-bury/-borough> and <-ham> (OE tu:n, burh, ha:m).

 

Piotr