Re: Whence Grimm?

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski
<piotr.gasiorowski@...> wrote:

> 07-04-2004 11:17, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > The following is taken from Kuhn:
> >
> > Greek teu~khos "implement"
> > PGmc. *teug- id. ("Zeug")
>
> Any reason why <Zeug> can't belong to the etymon of *deuk-? It's a

very

> large word-family in Germanic, showing plenty of derived meanings

(see

> Pokorny for details).

Of course it can. But the semantic match is particularly nice in this
case. I offered it as Kuhn's idea.

>
> > Greek doru/doratós "spear"
> > Homer g.sg. dourós, doúratos
> > dat. dourí, doúrati
> > n.a.pl. dou~ra, doúrata
> > PGmc. *darr-/*darraT-/*daruT- id. (archaic)
> > ON darr, darraDr
> > OE daroD
> > OHG tart
> >
> > PIE *dorwn.t
> >
> > The spear was early regularised to two different stems. Both

stems

> > occur in Germanic, where they must be loans.
>
> The stem variant <do(u)rat-> is a Greek innovation. Outside Greek

there

> is no support for an IE *dorw-n.t-. You could at best claim a post-

Grimm

> loan from Greek,

That's Kuhn's contention.

>but the form of *dar(r)VT- doesn't quite fit that
> scenario either.

Twin loan, actually, doru > *darr, dorat- > darraT, daruT. Since we
don't know that many early Greek loans in Germanic, what are the
restrictions we violate here (post-Grimm, pre o > a)?

>There are also some related Germanic verbs meaning
> 'hurt' (OE derian, OHG terren, taro:n) and the noun *daro: 'harm'

(OE

> daru, OHG tara), so I suspect a native Germanic formation, even if

the

> external connections of the root *dar- are uncertain.
>

I think it's odd that that collection shows e/o-ablaut (thus it would
be ancient), yet isn't known outside Germanic.

Torsten