Re: Gender of the sun

Subject: Re: The Gender of the Sun.
From: Sergejus Tarasovas

Piotr, thank you for your explanation. I've happened to read about different reflexes of *{e,o,a}{r,l} and *{e:,o:,a:}{r,l}, where qaulity is affected in anlaut (like in your example with *orb- and *ordl-) and stress (and partly quality) affected in inlaut (like in Russian vorona/voron and Lithuanian varna(falling intonation,open a)/varnas (raising intonation, closed a)), but your explanation on different reflexes of *{i,u}{r,l} and *{i:,u:}{r,l} is the first I got. Thank you very much again, may be this could be helpful: what about Russian pósolon' (посолонь) 'in the sun's direction, east to west', where stress is retracted to the preposition and which reflects *posъlnь not in a very straightforward manner.

One more question: what do you think about my suggestion that LIthuanian kentėti 'to suffer', 'kęsti' 'to suffer from pain' are one of that cognates of Greek kent- you asked the members of the group to provide you with?

Dear Sergei,

1. The difference between *{i,u}R and *{i:,u:}R is quite well visible in Slavic intonations. As a matter of fact, it seems to be a common Balto-Slavic phenomenon (as well as resembling some Indic developments). Here are a few typical examples (*@ stands for the B-Sl reflex of a post-sonorant laryngeal, whatever it was, and *c, *3 for the B-Sl satem palatals, probably affricates):

PIE *plHnos 'full' > *pil@... > *pi:lnas > Lith. pi`lnas, S-Cr. pu"n (cf. Skt pu:rna-)

PIE *dlHghos 'long' > *dil@... > *di:lgas > Lith. i`lgas, S-Cr. du"g (cf. Skt. di:rgha-)

PIE *grHnom 'grain' > *3ir@... > *3i:rna- > Lith. Zi`rnis 'pea seed', S-Cr. zr"no

as opposed to

PIE *wlkWos 'wolf' > *wilkas > Lith. vil^kas, S-Cr. vu^k (cf. Skt. vrka-)

Apart from compensatory lengthening due to the loss of a laryngeal, *{i,u}R (as well as *{i,u}N) could undergo lengthening when followed by an IE "plain voiced" stop (Winter's Law), again both in Baltic and Slavic.

2. I don't know the history of pósolon' (I wish I did; the form looks very interesting), but I suspect that the third o may represent a "spurious yer" added to an original *pósoln' < *pó-sUlnI as in ogon' 'fire' < *ognI (NOT *ogUnI; cf. Skt agni-, Latin ignis). Such epenthetic vowels often occur in stem-final clusters in Slavic. A similar case is Polish pełen 'full', a relatively recent innovation for earlier pełn (attested in older Polish; Russian still has poln).

3. I think I have already given a tentatively positive answer to this one. The only problem I can see is the semantic difference between pushing and being pushed (one would have to propose a plausible scenario for a mediopassive origin of the Lithuanian verbs). And how about adding Slavic *CINst- 'often, frequent(ly)' (Russian chasto, etc.) and Lithuanian kim^Stas 'stuffed full' < ?*knt-tó- 'pushed, poked'? Is it far-fetched in your opinion?

Piotr