Hello,
Pjotr, you wrote: >. The ultimate IE base of all these forms is *xoju,
Gen. xjou-s (Skt. a:yu, yoh) 'life, vitality, vigour [not to mention
various secondary meanings]', and the words cited so far comprise only
a small part of the lexical family derived from it (my fellow Slavs on
CyBaList would not forgive me if I forgot to mention juny, junost',
junak etc.). Individual languages have various feminine derivatives
from *xjuho:n. <
It is some time now that I wondered about the feminine suffix *-ia in
various eastern Aegean languages, often expressively denoting a goddess
(cf. ancient Hittite demons/goddesses of the underworld). This feminine
'suffix'is still productive in ancient Greek, but is it possible it
meant originally something like *-goddess ? Or was nit just, as you
said, a general epitheton of vitality? I'd like to remind you of the
unclear origin of words of the Dionysos perimeter: Iakchos,
Iakinthos(or Hyakinthos, the pronunciation must have been pre-Greek and
unclear for Greek speakers), Iobates, Iao, Ianus, Iapethos (in
different spellings)- referring to male principles of vitality. And
also Eileithyia, Hyades, Iahu, and the strange words belonging to the
root *yo/a (because, if I understand current lingusitics correctly, not
fitting -Hyos- /*sua/= sow, but mythologically a very ancient root for
swine, the main holy animal for the prehistoric mother goddesses, and
an adjacent herb -hyoscyamos, a narcotic Circe used to change Odysseus'
friends into swine), Amph'io'ne, Hittite Iyaya. I'm aware of the fact
that *ija- in Anatolian languages means to make/produce as well as to
go.
Is there an inner connection for all these name-sakes?
Greetings from Crete
Sabine
=?iso-8859-2?q?piotr_g=b1siorowski?= <
gpiot-@...> wrote:
original article:
http://www.egroups.com/group/cybalist/?start=61
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: Stephanie Budin
> To: cybalist@egroups.com
> Sent: Friday, October 08, 1999 5:24 PM
> Subject: [cybalist] girls
>
>
> Greetings, All!
>
> To promote e-flow <g>, please allow me to ask a question that has
> been on my mind for some time now. Is there an I-E or P-I-E word for
> "girl"? In the majority of I-E languages which I know or at least
know
> of, there is no specific word for "girl," but either diminutive forms
of
> "woman" (such as the German "maedchen" and "fraeuline"), or feminine
> forms of words for "boy" (Spanish "chica" "muchacha"; Latin
"puella"), or
> the term for daughter (French "jeune fille"). Only English ("girl"),
> Greek ("kore") and possibly Irish ("colleen") seem to have words
which
> specifically refer to a young woman. By contrast, all of these
languages
> have specific words for "boy": garcon, knabe, bube, puer, etc...
> So, is there an I-E form for "girl," and if not, where does the
> English word come from? Also, if not, does this perhaps contribute
to
> the idea of the I-Es as somewhat patriarchal? I remember reading a
while
> back that the Iroquois, a matrifocal society, had several words for
"girl"
> and "woman," but none for "boy."
>
> Many Thanks!
> Stephanie L. Budin
> University of Pennsylvania
>
>
>
>
> Well, is there a known PIE word for 'boy'? There seems to have been
one for 'young man': *xjuho:n, Gen. *xjuhn-os (reflected e.g. in
Sanskrit yuva:, yu:nah). What looks like its diminutive form
(originally adjectival), *xjuh@..., underlies Latin iuvencus 'young
man; bullock' and English young (the g is from Verner's Law).
Similarly, iuventus is virtually the same as English youth. The
ultimate IE base of all these forms is *xoju, Gen. xjou-s (Skt. a:yu,
yoh) 'life, vitality, vigour [not to mention various secondary
meanings]', and the words cited so far comprise only a small part of
the lexical family derived from it (my fellow Slavs on CyBaList would
not forgive me if I forgot to mention juny, junost', junak etc.).
Individual languages have various feminine derivatives from *xjuho:n. I
have the vague feeling (though I cannot check it at the moment) that
Sanskrit had one (yu:ni:? -- does anyone on CyBaList have a good Skt.
dictionary within easy reach?); and Latin certainly had iuvenca 'young
woman; young cow, heifer'. It is impossible to say how ancient these
derivatives are (in particular, whether they can be projected onto
PIE), because they are part of highly productive word-formation
patterns.
>
> At its earliest reconstructible stage, PIE had no feminine gender
as a grammatical category. When the old two-way system of noun classes
(animate : inanimate) was replaced with a three-way one (masculine :
feminine : neuter), former "animate" nouns often split into
specifically masculine and specifically feminine cognates. It was
normally the feminine that was morphologically "marked" with respect to
its masculine counterpart (in that it took on a special feminine
suffix), but I can't say if that means that the IEs were patriarchal. I
don't know, either, if the oldest meaning of *xjuho:n was 'young man'
or 'young/vigorous human being'. Its morphological structure leaves
both possibilities open.
>
> "Girl" and "boy" are relatively new words in English; dictionaries
classify them as "words of obscure origin". Tentative connections with
some Scandinavian and Low German words have been drawn, but there are
no credible Proto-Germanic etymologies. Perhaps "boy" and "girl" come
from some kind of Early Middle English slang and are quite literally
words with no ancient past. Their Old English equivalents, as you
probably know, were maegden and cniht, both of which have shifted
semantically (> maiden, knight). In Chaucer's language, boy meant
'knave, rascal', and gerl~girl still had its original meaning, which
was... 'a young person of either sex'! Terms from this semantic domain
may evolve very quickly (I ignore here lass, lad etc., but they are an
additional factor of complication), and this is also true of languages
other than English (see how many different Romance items there exist).
There is no reason to suppose that the earlies IE dialects were
exceptional in this respect.
>
> Piotr Gasiorowski
>