[tied] Re: An odd etymology

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

>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "tgpedersen" <tgpedersen@...>
> To: <cybalist@yahoogroups.com>
> Sent: Thursday, May 13, 2004 11:02 AM
> Subject: [tied] Re: An odd etymology
>
> Just some loose comments:
>
> > PIE *akWis-/*akWus- "axe"
> > PIE *ak-/*ag^- "sharp"
> > PIE *ak- "stone"
>
> The labiovelar in Gmc. *akWizjo:/*ak(W)usjo: (cf. Myc.Gk. a-qi-ja)

makes

> comparison with *h2ak^- (no *h2ag^- variant!) impossible. The

etymological

> source is obviously something like *(h2)agWis-jah2.

All under the assumption that the word is a bona fide IE word and has
made the trip all the way from PIE in all branches. Note Basque
<aizkora>. If it's a loan word, these inconsistencies suddenly look
acceptable.
And I'd like to add another root:
English whet, German wetzen, Danish dial. hvætte < PGmc. *hWatt-
Danish hvas "sharp", hvæsse "whet" < *PGmc. *hWass ?< *hwat-t-
with the alternation -tt-/-ss- Kuhn wrote an article about (is this a
regional Nordwestblock exception to the Celtic, Italic, Germanic
rule -t-t- > -ss-?).

>
> > PIE *op-
> > Latin opinor "believes"
> > PGmc. *ho:p-/*hoff- "hope"
> > No match outside Germanic; my Danish etymolgy book wants to

connect

> > it *hopp- "hop" as in "jump for joy". Hm!
>
> The PGmc. reconstruction is faulty (actually the word seems to have
> originated in the westernmost, Anglo/Frankish part of West

Germanic, so

> "PGmc." is an overstatement). There's no long *o: there, and the

short /o/

> of OE hopian and hopa represents lowered *u, so the hypothetical

Germanic

> prototypes would have been *xupo:jan- (verb), *xup-an- (weak noun).
>

Which is as you'd expect in a loaned Nordwestblock word.

> > PIE *ap- "bind"
>
> Isn't it *h1ep-?
>
> > PGmc. *hap-/*hab- "grasp", "have"
>
> But *kap-je/o- is surely PIE, not NWBlockish
>
> > Latin odi "hate"
> > Gmc hate
> > but they have plenty of cognates
>
> ... and don't appear to be related. PGmc. *xadaz/*xadiz- was an *-

es- stem

> with /k/-initial cognates at least in Celtic (I have doubts about

cognates

> farther afield under Pokorny's *k^a:d- or EIEC *k^ah2des-)
>
> > PIE *omb-/*ombh- "swell"
> > English hump
>
> But <hump> was first attested in 16th-c. Low German and Dutch; its
> attestation in English is even more recent (the 17th c.). Not much

to build

> an ancient etymology on.

Again, that's exactly the type of "occurence behaviour" you'd expect
from a Nordwestblock substrate word. Late appearance, belonging to
the "nether regions" of the borrowing language. Kuhn observed that
with almost all his proposed Nordwestblock loans. Words in initial p-
are very rare in the early sources in Old English, Saxon and Dutch,
Kuhn counted three in one poem (the correspondences of <play>,
<penny> and the third I forgot).

>It's accidentally (or phonosymbolically?) similar
> to a number of other things, e.g. *kumbo- 'pot, bowl'. Again, the

vowel of

> <hump> doesn't match that of *ombH-

And in a similar manner. Hm.

>
> > PIE *op- "be abundant"
> > Latin copia
> > PGmc *haupa-/*hu:pon "heap"
> > I suspect the -au- was posited to accomodate -o:- in low German.

It

> > might have -o:- to begin with.
>
> English heap (OE he:ap) definitely requires *au. Latin co:pia < *co-

op-

> 'plenty together'.
>

So we might need to posit a correspondence au, u ~ o. I've seen worse.

Torsten