Re: 'dyeus'

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, "Torsten" <tgpedersen@...> wrote:

>
> [...]
>
> I wondered if there was once in Latin a situation where the descendant of PIE *j (zero grade of *i) had two socio-allophones:
> a 'sacred' *j, and
> a 'profane' *d3,
>
> and that the names of some gods by hypercorrection got *j- for
> PIE *d-j- > *dj-
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Janus
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diana_(mythology)
>
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jupiter_(mythology)#Etymology
>
> Ernout-Meillet
> 'Diana, -ae
> (Dīāna, Ov.M.8,353;.
> Dīviāna, Varron, si ce n'est pas une reconstruction étymologique sans
> réalité;
> Iāna Lūna, forme attribuée aux rūsticī par Varron, R.R.1,37,3)
> f.: Diane, déesse nocturne, c.-à-d. Lune:
> Dianam autem et Lunam eandem esse putant, Cic., N.D.2,68;
> proprement "la lumineuse",
> dicta quia noctu quasi diem efficerat, Cic., ibid.3,69;
> cf. Iuppiter Diānus.
> Diane est la déesse qui préside aux opérations magiques, et son nom est demeuré dans les langues romanes avec le sens de "fée, sorcière", etc., M.L. 2624. Sans doute dérivé de dīus par un intermédiaire *dīuius?; cf. étr. tiv; la scansion d'Ovide a gardé la quantité ancienne.
> ...
>
> diū, dius (ū?): pendant le jour.
> Ancien cas de die:s (v. ce mot) conservé dans la locution noctū diūque
> (usité seulement chez les archaïques et les archaïsants), et dans interdiū, plus tard interdie: d'après hodie:, etc.
> Il est probable que noctū a été fait d'après diū "de jour". Mais le dérivé diurnus, fait sur diu-, doit l'avoir été d'après nocturnus, cf. gr. νύκτωp "de nuit", νύκτερος, νυκτερινός "nocturne".
> dius: même sens que le précédent, 2 ex. dans la locution noctū diusque Pl., Mer.882, Tit., Com.13. On a aussi interdius, perdius (Gell., fait secondairement sur pernox). Dius peut être un génitif (cf. l'emploi de noctis, νυκτός et les génitifs skr. diváh., gr. δι(F)ός), ou une formation analogique, comme le génitif skr. dyόh..
> V. die:s.'
>
> Why else *djou- -> Jou- in Jupiter and diu- otherwise?

Why on Earth would Varro's country bumpkins use a "sacred sociolect", with <Ja:na> for Roman Latin <Dia:na>? I think instead we should be looking at a Sabine Latin dialect (not Sabine itself, just as Irish English is not Irish itself). The gemination of <Juppiter> beside expected *Diu:piter (from the IE vocative) has parallels in <futtilis> 'easily emptied, leaky, useless' beside <fu:tilis> and <vitta> 'band, ribbon, fillet' beside expected *vi:ta. These two words are hardly "sacred"; probably they come from the same rustic Sabinizing dialect as <Ja:na>. Obviously <Ja:nus>, name of the god of transitions, is based on IE *yeh2- 'to go from one place to another' and has no etymological connection with <Dia:na>, but confusion had already arisen in late antiquity due to the rustic form <Ja:na>.

Varro says "arae Sabinam linguam olent" which I take to mean not that the sacrificial priests spoke Sabine, but that they used a Sabinizing dialect of Latin with technical terms derived from Sabine. I have argued elsewhere that <sulphur>, <mamphur>, and <scintilla> owe their peculiar consonantism to this dialect, these words originally denoting objects used in the fire-starting ritual (and I am now inclined to add <ra:menta> to this group). In my view Sabine Latin was used by the sacrificial priests, by a segment of the Roman underclass, and by certain rustics, but I have found no concrete evidence of differentiation among the three sub-dialects.

> The 'profane' allophone *d3 would then have become the norm in that late Latin from which the Romance languages (minus Romanian?) developed.
>
> Under die:s in Ernout-Meillet, I found
> 'D'une racine *dei- "briller" (dans skr. ádīdet "il brillait"), qui est médiocrement attestée, l'indo-européen avait deux formations comportant des élargissements,
> l'une en *-eu-, désignant le "ciel lumineux", le "jour" (considérés comme des forces actives, divines),
> l'autre en *-en-, qui a subsisté seulement au sens de "jour".
> Les deux sens ont subsisté en latin.'
>
> Which made me wonder if it could be reduced to one root,
> *diŋ which > *diw- and *din- (*ŋ > w and n happens in Baltic Finnic).
>
> But then I discovered I already proposed that
> http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/cybalist/message/65539
>
> The Altaic part of that root:
> http://tinyurl.com/27souut
> http://tinyurl.com/2eo76gh
>
> It makes one wonder whether the Sky God
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_Father
> in Indo-European is a loan from the outside (as he was in Altaic)?

I think E-M are on the right track with root-extensions.

Whether or not the Sky Father's "Jovian" religion came from outside IE, scattered pieces of evidence point to an earlier solar religion. I suspect that Jovian evangelists insisted, using whatever force they found necessary, that the Sun was not a god but a mere inanimate object. And the old name for the Sun, *h2aws-el- 'the Shining One' vel sim., was replaced by a tabuistic metathetic form *sah2w-el-, originally construed in the neuter. But survivals of the old system persist in Lat. <auster>, discussed earlier, Sab. <ausel> 'the Sun' (according to Festus the source of the gentilicium <Aurelius>), and the relics of south-facing augury, which was superseded by east-facing augury under the Jovian system.

DGK