From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 1732
Date: 2000-03-01
----- Original Message -----From: Sergejus TarasovasSent: Tuesday, February 29, 2000 9:20 AMSubject: [cybalist] Re: Odp: IE Lithuanian-Mediterranean connections
Sergejus wrote: As attested by some sources, the Old Russian form of the word would look like *енътарь. The Lithuanian and Polish forms well may be late borrowings from Russian, after the fall of "yers". Another argument is that in Lithuanian folklore there are no stable compounds like gintaras+adjective (or at least they are not known to me) . In contrast, in Russian we find a very interesting (and regular) paraphrastic construction камень бел-горючь 'a burning stone of white', which can hardly be explained on a Russian basis and may well be a semantic carbon copy from some Indo-Iranian (I would insist on that Indo-) language. That could be a clue to this mysteriuos *(j)enV.
... which makes it little less mysterious than before. BTW, I don't know what old forms you have in mind, but are you sure that the Old Russian reconstruction would be *enUtarI rather than *janUtarI or the like? First, a reflex of short *e would be rather inconvenient in a putative Indo-Iranian loan, wouldn't it? Secondly, why didn't that word-initial *e- undergo the regular Russian change into o-, as in ozero, odin, osen', olen' etc.? Also, the Polish dialectal variation je- ~ ja- is only found in words with an etymological long vowel (*ja: or *e:). I think something like *ja:nu-ta:r- or *e:nu-ta:r- would fit the bill, but then what Indo-Iranian roots match the *ja:nu-/*e:nu- part? You seem to suggest it should be something to do with heat or burning. Have you got a concrete proposal?You certainly have a reason for insisting on Indo- in the context of Aryan presence close to Slavic. Would you mind elucidating this point?Piotr