From: Sergejus Tarasovas
Message: 1755
Date: 2000-03-02
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.
Piotr wrote:... 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?PiotrYou're really setting me up against the wall, Piotr; the more so, these are neraly exactly the same questions I ask to myself. Of course, if my only aid were to die hard, I would say that1. there could well be some intermediaries (Turkic-speaking?) who changed the quality of the e:2. as for Russian change *e- > *o in anlaut, this change, as you well know, is rather inconsistent, and there're a lot of exceptions, explained only to some extent (like Russian jiozh, jedva, jele, jel'/jiolkij, jiorsh etc).On the other hand, considering the question of distinguishing reflexes of *e from reflexes of *e:/oi/ai/o:i/a:i, Old Russian sources' orthography (especially if the word is registered rather late, and this is nearly always the case in birch bark inscriptions) very often gets awry on that point and rather obscures the matter than helps. Sreznevsky's example jentarI (ентарь) is quite ambiguous, but two years ago I had a chance to work with still (?) unpublished cardfile of the Russian Language Institute in Moscow, and it's what I've seen there that makes me think I have the reason to propose that *енътарь.Martin wrote:> I am interested in how you arrive at Indo-Iranian origin of 'jantar'. Such
> origin seems highly imporobable. The Balts had the most direct
> access to the
> what even now is the greatest resource of amber in the world. Why
> would they
> borrow a word from an inland language?Sergei:I'm not quite ready now to discuss the very reason of borrowing a word from the foreign language (pls see the end note), though I would like to note that the reason here well may be like 'as their merchants call it' and could be a matter of fashion. Language is spoken by the real people, and is not always a sacred thing, and many now venerable words show their slangish origin. The idea of posting my proposal here was just to attract members' attention to the fact that from the purely linguistic point of view, the Lithuanian gintaras, which well may be the late transformation (influenced by words of root gin-) of jentaras (a real form in dialects of Aukštaitija), is not obviously of Baltic origin DESPITE the obviuous and closest connection of the Balts to the amber (I, as well as all the other residents of Lithuania, have practiced amber-gathering from the very childhood :)> You rule out Blatic origin of
> 'gintaras' only because of lack of folkloric data? I would insist you read
> that one tale, already recited too many times about Jurate and
> Kastytis. And
> of course there is the female name Gintare:, though I am not sure
> if it may
> be a recent innovation. In my opinion what may account for the
> loss of much
> folkloric evidence regarding amber is German occupation of the Baltic
> coastal region. Only Palanga was a small outlet to the sea. Of course the
> Lithuanians lived in the coastal regions nevertheless, but the folklore of
> the Lietuvininkai (Lithuanian of East Prussia) has not been well published
> or analyzed yet. Praetorius wrote a lot about their traditions in
> regard to
> amber, but so far only the first of the seven volumes has been translated
> and published. As for further evidence - latvian folklore and
> toponymic data
> should be investigated.The Baltic origin seemed suspicious to me mainly because of lack of the Baltic etymology.I've just contacted a lithuanian folklorist (professional philologist) who approved that Lithuanian folklore seemes to consistently avoid mentioning gintaras in such contexts like songs and alike and has no standard epithet we find in constructions like eglė skarota, but I really never declared that there's rule that prohibits amber to be the building material of the castle, as well as never declared that Lithuanians don't have any traditions in regard to amber, because we can see the traces of these traditions nowadays. This consistent avoidance may, in my opinion, point to that slangish/'because of the fashion' origin of the WORD, the subject itself being something very intimate to the Balts. As for Gintarė, a male variant Gintaras is very common in Lithuania today that indeed may be explained as an innovation. I, indeed, haven't investigated latvian folklore and toponymics, but here's the result of querying the official computerized registry of today's Lithuanian settlements:-gint-:Gintarai (2 times, Ukmergė region, near Deltuva, and Kretinga region, near Kartena),Gintal- (4), Gintaut-(5), Ginteikiškės, Ginteniai, Gintiniai, Gintučiai, Gintviliškis, Gintynių, Jugintai, Stagintrakis, Sugint- (2).-jent-/-jint-: none.Of course, these data may be variously interpreted and not include hydronymy and other toponimic items like hills names etc.
>
> I would have to agree with Piotr's earlier post. This looks like
> a borrowing
> from Lithuanian into Russian. Lith. ge- transforming into Rus. je- is not
> uncommon. Even in medieval chronicles we see "Jedimin" as they transcribed
> the name of the duke "Gediminas" in the Galician-Volynian
> chronicle. This is
> a ge- > je- transformation in the borrowing process. What examples do we
> have of je- > ge- in Slavic borrowings in the Baltic languages?Yes, that is the case just because in Old Russian combinations like velar (k,g)+ front vowel (e,i etc) were prohibited and had to be replaced (je<ge being rather traditional, like in GeorgIjI>JurgIjI etc, here I=yer' after Piotr). But at the same time (early Old Russian) the combination -inC- (C - any consonant) was prohibited as well, so in the case of an early borrowing something like *jatarI would be expected. To accept Russian jantar' as a borrowing from Lithuanian we have to accept that there was a period in Old Russian developement, when the yers have already fallen (thus allowing -inC), but the combinations like ge haven't come convenient yet. I have to consult some sources to accept or reject this.
> From what I
> can see, it is most likely that Prussian had ge:ntaris or ge:ntars, which
> may have served as the source for borrowing into Slavic.Would you clarify what makes you think so? I've never heard of such lexeme in Prussian.> By historical and
> archaeological evidence - the Balts mostly traded with the Vikings, and
> before that - with Pannonia. In such a case economic exchange may have
> caused the borrowing of this word, so there is space for this theory.
> Another note - on the Prussian "gli:sis" you mentioned. It is not a valid
> word for comparing. You must have got it from some revivalist Neo-Prussian
> reconstruction dictionary, because in Old Prussian phonetics it could only
> have been Gle:si:s. Gli:sis is a "sembified" version according to the
> Sambland dialect of the cathechisms. If you check the Prussian dictionary
> site on the Internet (Cyril's web page has a link to it), the
> stated form is
> Gle:si:s, but there it is maked DK, as attested in a historical document.
> This historical document in reference is precisely Tacitus with his
> mentioned "glesum". In this case - gle:si:s is only as Prussian
> as Aestii is
> Baltic.I've never mentioned gli:sis, rather Piotr did it. As for Tacitus' gle:sum, no Baltic etymology was proposed for this word (and I would really appreciate any) as far as I know. The common opinion is that it's a latinised Germanic word, which can be traced back, as Piotr approved, to the Germanic *glas-.All that we have for Prussian, is glasa: 'glass', which looks as a borrowing from Germanic languages, and gla:sta: 'whetstone'<gla:d-, of the same PIE root *gel-, but differently suffixed. On the other hand, we have Slavic *glazU 'pebblestone etc'<*gl-o:g-, and if the Prussian (suppose) word may be analyzed like *gl-e:k/g-, this could be an evidence of the Prussian origin of the gle:sum.Still this is most likely a borrowing from Germanic, and we should conclude, that by some reason the Balts regularly replaced their word for amber with a borrowing.> But you do not believe that Aestii were the Balts. Though I would
> insist that the two are one and the same. The terms Aestii and Estii were
> used not only by Tacitus, but by later medieval chroniclers - Jordanes and
> Wulfstan (which is as late as the 9th century). So the term does have
> historical continuity. Another things that ties Aestii to the Balts is the
> other historically mentioned peoples of that area.Typology of nations' names is another complex subject to discuss, so just some notes.1. Very often (most often?) an ethnos is known not by the name it's members call themselves (usually this is something very trivial like 'all the our, locals' etc), but rather by the name given by its neighbours (like Germans from Celtic word with a meaning 'neighbours'). Aestii is just the name given by some Germanic tribes, it means 'easterns'.2. Such a name can be associated with a TERRITORY, and applied to another ethnos later (Estonians aren't Balts). So that what Tacitus' rendered as Aestii could well be a name of a Germanic group of tribes. The Lithuanian language itself gives us one typologically interesting example of such re-appliance. A representative of the Byelorussian ethnos is called gudas in Lithuanian, but etymologically this is 'Goth'. The presence of Goths in that area is explained by Jordanes text, but Gothic adstratum has completely disappeared, and even may had disappeared by the time the Slavic waves assimilated local Balts. We can discuss ethnogenesis of Byelorussians, but they are not Goths, anyway. The ethnonym RusI 'Russians' was re-applied to Eastern Slavic people from a relatively small totally assimilated ethnic subgroup.> Ptolemaios writes that
> East of Vistula is the river Chronos. On his map, East of Chronos, he
> indicates Sarmatia, but just to the South of Sarmatia it he identifies
> Galindae and Sudini, which are very similar to the Baltic tribes of
> Galindians and Soudovians, found in the vicinity South and East of Prussia
> in the 13th century. Of course this all depends on what we interpret the
> surrounding tribe sto be. It is still not clear where or who the
> Sarmatians
> were and how much area they actually inhabited.
In my opinion, one can hardly doubt Ptolemaios' Galindae are what we can conditionnaly mark as *galind- 'settles of the (border-)region (cf. Ukrainec 'Ukranian', literally 'one at the border') and *sūdū-/*ja:tving- '?' and what is rengered traditionally as Galindians and Soudovians. But how can this help prove that Tacitus' marker Aestii refers to Balts?
> In all conclusion - I simply found this Indo-Iranian borrowing
> theory to be
> highly unlikely when looing at the patterns of amber trade. I
> think there is
> just as much evidence against it if not more. I would like to see what the
> Lithuanian etymological dictionary has to say about it.
Still you'll have to prove that fromant -tar- is of Baltic origin (not known at least to me). As far as I'm concerned, the only Baltic etymology proposed (Bruckner?) tries to connect this word to Lithuanian genys 'woodpecker', which seemes to be very unprobable to all the commentors.
> I am more a historain that a linguist, so excuse me if my attempt at
> discussion is rather dilletantic. It is historians who expect help form
> linguists to fill in the gaps of information that actual
> historical sources
> do not explain. Linguists, too, must observe historical circumstances as
> indicated by actual sources and archeology. I hope my comments
> were at least
> of some use.I may be even more dilletantic than you here, as I'm an IT professional engaged in some linguistical projects, and professioal historian's notes are just invaluable for me. The Balts' trade connections are one of the most interesting sujects for me to discuss. Have you, by any chance, come across any reliable (from your point of view) source on that published on the Internet?Peter wrote:Despite all the linguistic difficulties, a northern origin for the amber words is a priori more likely. Unless, of course, Sergei has an ace up his sleeve.To give the answer that would cater both Piotr and Martin, I have to consult some sources (and check with some people), and this may take a week or so, so I would ask for a timeout.Sergei