Re: [tied] *pa(x)u- "small" and "fire"?

I don't think the general theory of PIE extensions (if ever formulated) will be that simple, but I find your idea that *pah2-u- might be a derivative of *pah2- really brilliant and I think I'll buy it if you don't charge too much :-). Congratulations, Glen.

I still don't think a derivation like *pah2u- + -r is viable; even in the Caland system you can have adjectival derivatives with *-u- or with *-ro- (*-no-), but less usually with both at the same time. There _are_ occasional mixed formations Gk. arguros 'silver' and Skt. arjuna- 'white' < *h2ár.g^-u- + -ro-/-no-, but these are thematic, unlike the 'fire' word. *pah2u-ro- is actually attested (Gk. pauros, Lat. parvus 'little, small, weak' [with metathesis]), but again it's thematic, as expected, and has no semantic connection with fire.

Piotr

----- Original Message -----
From: "Glen Gordon" <glengordon01@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2003 2:58 PM
Subject: Re: [tied] *pa(x)u- "small" and "fire"?


>
> Piotr:
> >Any examples of its use as such in _any_ branch? Judging from the reflexes
> >(such as Eng. few, Lat. paucus, etc.), we've got a primary adjective here,
> >without a corresponding verb.
>
> After rethinking, perhaps it's more like *paxu- "little" originating from
> *pax-u- "protected". Regardless, couldn't an adjectival stem be given
> the ending *-r at least? Basically *-r says "that/those which ..." and
> *paxw-r would signify "that which (is) small" or "little one". The suffix
> *-r is used for another natural element, *wod-r. Yet on the other hand, if
> I'm right about deriving *paxu- from *pax-, then both etymologies would
> ultimately signify the same thing:
>
> *pax- + -wr "that which is guarded"
> *pax-u- + -r "that which is guarded" (> "that which is little")
>
> *pax-u- "protected" > "helpless" > "little"
>
>
> On a related topic, I'm starting to think that "adjectives" (erh, or rather
> nouns that happen to describe a quality) like *paxu- could be made into
> verbs without any endings at an earlier stage of IE (specifically from Mid
> IE
> to early Late IE).
>
> Basically, a stem like *paxu- "little" could become **pxeu- as a verb.
> The reason for the shapeshifting lies in Mid IE where the 3ps, ending in
> *-e would shift the penultimate accent to the last syllable of the verb
> (eg: *pex-eu-e). After loss of unstressed schwa, you end up with a
> nominal stem in CVCC- and a verbal counterpart of the shape CCVC-.
>
> So I'm thinking that maybe verbs like *kleu- "to hear", for example, are
> formed from adjectives (*kel-u- "called" < *kel(-x)- "to call"). That goes
> too for the *-ei- verbal extension that I also suspect is adjectival in
> origin. An example of *-ei- is *mn-ei- from *men- "to think" which would
> theoretically be from an adjective *men-i- "thoughtful"(?).
>
> I'd just like to add that since the s-aorists don't conform to this CCVC-
> verbal pattern, I have come to the conclusion in the past few months that
> they were originally deverbal stative nouns that were taken bare as verbs
> to eventually convey this new aspect. Obviously, IE got a little more
> synthetic since then and came to employ special denominal verb markers
> like *-y[e/o]- and *-dh[e/o]-.
>
> See? It all this morphology ties together! :) Does what I say sound
> crappy? I'd like some thoughts on that.
>
>
> - gLeN
>
>
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