Re: Meaning and analysis of *Dye:us

From: dgkilday57
Message: 71750
Date: 2014-06-28




---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <dgkilday57@...> wrote :




---In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, <josimo70@...> wrote:

What would be the original meaning of *Dye:us? How this noun is formed?
Could it be analysed as *dye:u-, *dyeh1u-, *dyeh1-u?, dye-h1u ?
How if *dye:u- < *dyeh1u- <*dyeh1-yu, through dissimilation?

A form *dyeh1-yu would be analogous to *h2we1-yu, cf. Sanskrit Va:yu, the Wind God.


 

DGK:  No laryngeal is necessary if we follow the explanation of the long vowel given by Sihler (New Comp. Gr. of Grk. & Lat. §§324-7).  In his treatment, the PIE acc. *djéum regularly became *djé:m (whence Skt. _dyá:m_, Old Lat. *die:m, Old Grk. _Zên_, in Homer and Hesiod only verse-final with a subsequent vowel, as though it were Class. Grk. _Zêna_ elided).  This is parallel to the acc. *gWóum 'head of cattle' becoming *gWó:m, with both acc. forms acting back on the nom. *djéus, *gWóus to yield *djé:us, *gWó:us.  The long diphthongs are preserved in the Skt. nom. *dyáus, *gáus but underwent Osthoff's shortening outside Indo-Iranian (with the possible exception of _Ze:us_ in an inscription of Thera, but this is more likely a carver's error, eta from the acc. inadvertently replacing epsilon).

 

An alternative to the usual view that *djé:us comes from a /w/-extension of PIE *dei- (Pokorny, IEW 184) or simply from *deiw- 'to shine' (Watkins, AHD App.) is that it is an active root-noun compounded from *dei- (regularly in the zero-grade) and the simplex *jeu- 'to join, connect' (cf. *jeu-, *jeu@-, *jeug- 'verbinden', IEW 508, and Sihler's comments on nasal-present infixation, NCG §453).  The protoform would be *di-jeu- 'light-joiner, one who connects the world with light, illuminator of the world'.

 

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DGK bis:  Pokorny, Sihler, and I overlooked the evidence provided by Lehmann (PIE Phonology 76-9) in favor of laryngeal anlaut for 'yoke', which must apply also to the simplex 'join'.  This evidence includes the long vowels in Vedic _abhi:yújas_ 'assailant' and _á:yukta_ 'endowed with' as well as an improvement on Sapir's theory of the Greek z- which corresponds to *j- elsewhere.  Lehmann argued elegantly that this Greek z- must have developed from *h3j-, and _zugón_ 'yoke' must continue PIE *h3jugóm.  The simplex 'join' in question is thus not *jeu- but *h3jeu-, and a primitive compound *di-h3jeu- could not have led to Greek _Zeús_ and the rest.  If 'Zeus' is to be analyzed as a compound this way, the second element must be *jeu- 'set in motion' vel sim., the simplex of *jeu-dH- 'move (oneself) violently, fight' (IEW 511-2).


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In his criticism of Edgerton's and Lindeman's Laws (NCG §§179-81), Sihler observed that the Rig-Vedic scansion _diyáus_ occurs far less frequently than predicted by Edgerton, and exhibits a distributional preference which Lindeman cannot explain.  All but one of the 26 examples of _diyáus_ in the RV occur in line-initial position.  If the protoform was in fact *di-jeu-, these disyllabic nominatives are archaisms, already superseded by _dyáus_ at an early stage of Vedic, and their distribution has nothing to do with Sievers' Law or any elaboration thereof.  Greek likewise has only a monosyllabic nominative.  But in Italo-Celtic it appears that the disyllabic acc. *dije:m generated a new paradigm for 'day', with nom. *dije:s reflected as Old Irish _dïe_, Lat. _die:s_.  The Phrygian acc. _Tian_ also looks like a disyllable reflecting *dije:m.

 

I would thus suggest a modification of Sihler's scenario, in which the original acc. *dijéum became *dijé:m and acted on the orig. nom. *dijéus to create *dijé:us.  Absorption of the */i/ from nom. and acc. did not occur in PIE, but independently in Sanskrit and Greek.

 

Finally, _Deipáturos_, according to Hesychius a god of the Tymphaeans or Stymphaeans (by either name Illyrians), should not be identified with Zeus as is done by Pokorny (IEW 184) and Krahe (Sprache der Illyrier 54).  The first element cannot plausibly represent a case-form of *D(i)jé:us.  More likely it continues the vocative of a root-noun simply derived from *dei- and the name is to be understood as 'Father Light', not 'Father Sky'.  The latter would have been glossed specifically as _Zeús_, not generically as _theós_.