Re: Odp: The date of PIE.

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----- Original Message -----

From: Marc Verhaegen

To: cybalist@egroups.com

Sent: Wednesday, November 03, 1999 8:26 PM

Subject: [cybalist] Re: The date of PIE.

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The Dutch words touw and tooi have the same etymology (just as gouw and Gooi, which both mean 'district', or just as ooi, Latin oui- and English ewe, which all mean '(female) sheep'). But their meaning is quite different: touw (German Tau) means 'cord' and tooi 'ornament'. They are related to the weak verbs tooien 'to decorate', voltooien 'to complete', Gothic taujan 'to complete, to make', and runic ek hlewagastir holtijar horna tawido on the Gallehus gold horn of Jutland ad 400 'I ... decorated (this) horn' (e.g., De Vries, 1979; Todd, 1994). Weak verbs in Germanic frequently derived from nouns by -i/j-, or -ian/jan in the infinitive (PIE suffix -ei/i- already made denominativa, see Beekes, 1990; De Vries, 1982). Proto-Germanic taujan thus meant 'to use a cord' and more specifically 'to finish by decorating with a cord'. Later, when the link with a cord got lost, the meaning generalised to 'to decorate' or 'to complete' as in Dutch (vol)tooien (whence tooi).

Old English has tawian, p. tawode 'taw (skins), prepare (material), curry (leather), etc.' = Runic tawido on the Gallehus Horn = OHG zouwen, zouuita 'arrange, prepare' = Gothic taujan, tawida 'do, complete, make'. There are OE compounds with a related word, -tawa 'tool', as the second element; there is also Gothic tawi 'work'. Outside Germanic Old Irish doid 'executes, takes care of' has been quoted as a cognate. On the whole, the meaning is something like 'finish off, complete, make perfect' and no connection with a cord seems justifiable. I'm a little out of my deep in discussing Dutch etymologies, but isn't your crucial assumption that 'touw and tooi have the same etymology' premature? Touw may be related to touwen 'to spin', and to Old Saxon tou, Old English to:w = ModE tow 'scutched fibres of hemp, flax, etc.' If it is, then it can't be related to tooi in the way you suggest!

Alexander Stolbov commented on these ideas: When reading about Dutch words touw and tooi, I recollected a Russian verb davit' (the root dav-), which means 'to press, to squeeze, to stamp, to emboss'. This word is common in all Slavic languages. To say the truth, in Russian I know only one derivative of this root, which has a hint of a rope: udavit' 'to strangle, to hang' - not so close to decorating! On the other hand, davit' is the ideal mediator between touw and tooi : cord - pressing - ornament , isn't it?

Verbs related to OCSl daviti 'strangle, choke' exist in all the Slavic languages I have checked: Russian, Polish, Czech, Bulgarian, Serbo-Croatian, Slovene and Ukrainian. Polish, exceptionally, has dławić with an extra liquid in the onset, but this is a recent form resulting from contamination. Up to the 18th c. Polish had only dawić like the rest of the branch. In some Slavic languages secondary shades of meaning have developed, such as 'vomit' (Czech), 'press' (Russian, Ukrainian), 'drown' (Serbo-Croatian). Nowhere is there any mention of decoration, cord or rope, and the overtones of the verb are generally rather ominous: the prototypical meaning, found everywhere, is something like 'kill by squeezing the throat of' (often used of wolves).

As for its IE links, I think the verb is a causative (< *dho(:)u-eie-) related to English die, ONorse deyja, OHG touwen 'expire, breathe one's last'. The original meaning must have been 'cause to die, squeeze the breath out of'. Cf. also Germanic words for death (*dhou-t-) and Gothic af-dauidai 'exhausted (pl.)'. The lengthened vowel has parallels in Slavic (plaviti 'set afloat' from plov- 'swim, float'). Other probable cognates include Phrygian daos 'wolf' (= 'strangler, killer') and Avestan dvaidi: 'oppress' (1st du. pres. middle). More speculatively, one could try to connect it with *dheu-s-/dhw-es-/dhu-s- 'breathe, live; soul; animal, ...' (English deer, Greek theos, Slavic duša 'soul' etc.), but there is quite certainly no connection with toow or tooi.

Piotr Gąsiorowski