From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 20744
Date: 2003-04-03
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sergejus Tarasovas" <S.Tarasovas@...>
To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
Sent: Thursday, April 03, 2003 5:38 PM
Subject: [tied] Sunki dalia
> But those *dole^ti ~ *dolati ~ *doliti (Russ. dial. <zdólit'>,
Belarusian <zdólic'> 'be able to') eventually derive from PIE *del-
'divide', don't they?
I don't know. I'll have to give it more thought.
> Are those unhappy implications -- too conspiciously close to the Lithuanian ones -- are the only obstacle on the otherwise easy derivational road from *del(H)- ~ *dol- to (?)*dolja, whose semantics fits much better with that of *del- than that of the verbs in question does (the nativeness of these verbs being clear of suspicion)?
The distribution is also suspect. That of the verbs is pan-Slavic, so there's no reason to doubt that they are inherited. But, as far as I know, *dolja is limited to East Slavic and Polish (first attestation here in the early 17th century), a stone's throw from Lithuania. One possibility is that <doliti> and <dalyti> are cognates (with the Slavic verb having evolved in a way that remains to be investigated), but that <dolja> is a loan nevertheless (or, less likely, a semantic living fossil).
Piotr