Re: -leben/-lev/-löv and -ung-

On 2007-12-10 07:07, stlatos wrote:

> You said Gamajun looked Indo-Iranian. If from anything there, it
> must be from Garutma:n or a slightly dif. form depending on which
> language it came from. That strains credibility much more.

But I only said I wondered whether it wasn't IIr., and the inference
that it "must" be Garutma:n (or anything like that) is yours, not mine.

> I don't
> think Gdan'sk causes any more difficulties than, say, *Foiniks > Finist.

Well, since it was taken from Mediaeval Greek, the source was /finiks/,
and /ks/ was unusual in Slavic, so the connection isn't difficult to
believe in.

> Depending on the timing, maybe just:
>
> *gutiskandjaz

*-andi:z, more likely (Goth. andeis < *anDijaz), but it may not matter
much, given *-arjI from what surfaces as <-areis> in Biblical Gothic.

> *gUtIskandjU ... basic Sl-formating
> *gUtIskand'U ... dj > d'
> *gUtIskan'U .... no d' in Sl (all dj>dz^ earlier)

In an early loan you would have *dj > *dz. Later, there always was a
*d'. *-ndj- > *-nj- doesn't happen because *-dj- was never a problem.
The natural adaptation of *gutisk(az) andi:(z) to Slavic phonotactics
would have been something like *gUtIskoNdI (or *-dzI), with really
nothing in need of repair, fully pronounceable in PSl. terms. Now from
_that_ we'd get Polish *Giecka,dz(') rather than Gdan'sk.

> *gUtan'IskU .... met. to put pal. C before I
> *gtan'sk ....... weak yer > 0
> *gdan'sk ....... C > +voice after C+v in syl.

But voicing assimilation is invariably regressive in such new clusters,
cf. *kUde^ > gdzie 'where', *stIblo > z'dz'bl/o, *dUska > OPol. cka, etc.

> That's only one case of met., to get n'I not n'U,

'U > 'I was an automatic adjustment rule in Slavic. You get it
absolutely free, so the metathesis does require a leap of faith. *tI >
*t'I is also automatic. The further difficulty is the vowel /a/ in
Polish (Slavic *a), which can't reflect short *a in the donor language.
Germanic *a regularly becomes Slavic *o in loans.

> which is a
> reasonable thing to want at the time. Every other change is adapting
> a foreign word to Sl phonetics and phonotactics.

Finally, there's no evidence that "Gothiskandza" was ever used as the
name of a town (or that there was an important Gothic settlement in or
near present-day Gdan'sk). Jordanes applies it to the whole country of
the Goths before their migration to the Black Sea area.

Piotr