Re: [tied] Re: bg. nvEsta

From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 20435
Date: 2003-03-28

----- Original Message -----
From: "Daniel J. Milton" <dmilt1896@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, March 27, 2003 9:00 PM
Subject: [tied] Re: bg. nvEsta


*****
> "The newest one" certainly makes more sense than "the unknown" for "bride". However, does the I.E superlative *-isto show up in Slavic?

Well, it doesn't. One could of course claim that *neve^sta is an isolated archaic formation, but one additional difficulty is the fact that in the groups that have it (Germanic, Greek, Indo-Iranian) *-isto- attaches itself directly to the root without a thematic "buffer", i.e. *new-isto-, not *newo-isto-. *ne + *woista: (= *woid-ta:) is certainly more plausible from the formal point of view, especially since *(iz-)ve^stU 'known' is well attested in Slavic. Cf. also *ve^stI 'news', *ve^stiti 'announce', etc. Perhaps the precise meaning was 'not officially pronounced married' rather than 'unknown'.

Piotr