Re: [tied] bhratr

On Mon, 06 Oct 2003 23:01:22 +0200, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

>06-10-03 04:12, Fritz Saxl wrote:
>
>> Thinking about the IE words for "brother", sansk. bhratr, gr. frater,
>> lat.frater, germ. brodar, I realized that the germanic word is more
>> closely related to sanskrit than the others. Have you any thoughts on this?
>
>The actual cognates of Skt. bHra:tar- (nom.sg. bHrá:ta:) include the
>following:
>
>Avestan bra:ta:
>Latin fra:ter
>Greek pHra:té:r
>Slavic *bratrU, *bratU
>Baltic *bra:t- (Lith. brólis, Latv. brãlis represent old pet forms)
>Celtic *bra:ti:r (OIr. bráth(a)ir, Wel. brawd, pl. brodyr)
>Germanic *bro:þar- (Goth. bro:þar, OE bro:þor, OHG bruodar, ON bróðir)
>Tocharian (A) pracar, (B) procer
>Armenian eLbayr
>
>All of them are derived more or less straightforwardly from PIE
>*bHráh2ter- via well-known sound changes. How do you figure out that the
>Sanskrit and Germanic forms are "more closely related than the others"?

The only objective criterion would be "smallest amount of mutations" to get
from the proto-form to the attested reflexes. By that criterion, Germanic
is less "closely related" to Sanskrit than Greek or Latin. Leaving aside
the exact vocalisation of the second syllable (which in any case depended
on the exact case form), and disregarding the change *eh2 > *a: which is
shared by all the forms above, the number of changes required to get from
*bhrá:t..r to the forms attested are:

Skt. 0
Av. 1 (bh > b)
Grk. 1 (bh > ph)
Lat. 1 (bh > f)
Slav. 2 (bh > b, a: > a)
OIr. 2 (bh > b, t > th)
Goth 3 (bh > b, a: > o:, t > þ)
ToB 3 (bh > p, a: > o, t > c)
Arm 5 (bh > b, br > rb, rb > l~b, l~b- > el~b-, t > y)

[The above is only an indication. For instance, it can be argued that the
Latin change involved two steps bh > ph, ph > f; or that the Slavic change
a: > a is not a change at all (merely the side-effect of another change /a/

> /o/); in Armenian, *bra:ti:r may have developed to el~bayr trough

different paths, etc.]

=======================
Miguel Carrasquer Vidal
mcv@...