--- In
cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
wrote:
> On 04-11-08 14:12, tgpedersen wrote:
>
> > "sit" is a common verb and occurs in hundreds of compounds in
modern
> > IE languages.
>
> Hundreds of compounds? Isn't this an exaggeration?
Try -setz- in German.
>
> > In original PIE as opposed to constructions in later
> > stages, you'd expect that root to ablaut, thus in compounds you'd
get
> > zero grade *-sd-. To my knowledge there are three examples of
that.
> > That's isolated.
>
> Well, there are also very few examples of *-bd- from the nil grade
of
> *ped-, such as Av. frabda-, abda- < *pro-pd-o-, *n.-pd-o-. Does it
mean
> that they are loanwords? Quite the opposite. They are relict forms
> surviving from a time when such ablaut was fully productive. In
less
> archaic but far more numerous compounds reduction was avoided in
order
> to preserve the morphological and semantic transparency of the
word.
> Asyllabic nil grades of roots with two obstruents are generally
> characterised by extremely low survival rates. This is why Lat.
> prae-se:s, -sidis always keeps its vowel, though we'd expect PIE
> *-sé:d-s, *-sd-ós. Three examples of nominal compounds, plus
> reduplications like *se-sd- and *si-sd-e- add up to decent
attestation,
> as such roots go.
>
This whole discusson started because of my suggestion that -st in
personal and place names in the Nordwestblock area, thus most likely
in the Nordwestblock language might be IE *-s-d- "sit". The relicts
of IE -sd- and whether or not they are inherited or (cross-)loaned
are not quite relevant here.
Actually there are (at least) three possibilities for the -st suffix:
1) It's non-IE Nordwestblock (the ar-/ur- language), in which case
-st is not IE *s-d- "sit"; but the root exists in Semitic too, and it
may thus be a loan from Vennemann's Afro-Asiatic Atlantic.
2) It's IE Nordwestblock, in which case my conjecture may be right.
3) It's Germanic, which leaves unexplained the suffix' restriction to
the Nordwestblock area (and Scandinavia?).
The element *sege(s)- of Segestes and Segemerus occurs also in the
personal name ODa. Sighar, Da. Sejr, which occurs in several Danish
place names with -lev, ie. Sigerslev, and a single Sigersted,
traditionally the property of the Hvide or Trugot family of Ringsted
(the family of archbishop Absalon, the founder of Copenhagen and the
conqueror of Arkona in the crusades in the Baltic). My uncle Jon
Galster suggested that that family represented the original
population from before the conquest in the first cent. BCE - first
cent. CE. Others suggest, based on location and type of their land
property (jordtilliggende) that -sted names belonged to "old
nobility" before the "lev-nobility" took over. The place name books
I've consulted do not recognize -st endings as such, but see it as a
corruption of -sted (-stadh) names; probably the data they've had at
their disposal was too shaky to support both a -st and a -sted
suffix.
Torsten