From: Piotr Gasiorowski
Message: 2037
Date: 2000-04-04
----- Original Message -----From: Mark OdegardSent: Tuesday, April 04, 2000 3:30 AMSubject: [cybalist] Ein' feste BurgMark,
You're right. It would be perverse to insist that the two words represent different roots. The common range of meaning has been reconstructed as 'hill, height, hill-fort' -- so often quoted in the literature that it's become one of those things 'all the world knows'. I think it's the authors of the entries who are missing something. There are, for example, forms like Armenian barjr 'high' (with impeccable vocalism), and nice Hittite reflexes: parku- 'high' (a u-stem adjective < *bH@...) plus the nouns pargatar, parkuwatar, parkessar 'height'. Why neither of the authors mentions them is a mystery to me. There are also interesting occurrences of centum berg- and satem birz- in the ancient toponymy of the Balkan region. Slavic *bergU is certainly a member of this word family, but looks loanwordish (Germanic?) with its non-satemised g. Della Volpe's Homeric example is hopeless -- **parkHos differs from purgos on two very problematic counts, and what's worse, if the second stop is not aspirated, why did the first undergo Grassmann's Law? (So it's really three counts.) The connection with Latin fortus is equally strained and probably indefensible. I think the Latin and Greek "cognates" should be disqualified and the Slavic one parenthesised as a possible loanword. What remains is strong enough, like a hill-fort.
Piotr
Mark writes:
What shows up in German as burg is interesting. German of course also has berg, 'mountain'. EIEC , in two separate articles, by separate authors cover the word EIEC renders as bergh.
Under the article "Fort", p. 210, Angela Della Volpe puts the Germanic reflex together with Homeric purgos, Armenian burgn, suggesting relationships with Tocharian words for 'hard' 'solid', and possible connection with Latin fortus/fortis. Old Indic brmhati, 'fortifies' is also cited. The main sense cited is 'height', 'fort'.
Douglas Q. Adams, in the article "Hill", p. 269, using the identical transcription, flatly says this is PIE for 'high', 'hill', 'mountain'. He cites where it shows up in the daughters. It's mountain in Germanic, hill in Celtic. OCS bregu and Russian bereg: 'riverbank'. Avestan and Ossetic use it for mountain or mountinous parts too.
Della Volpe ignores the mountain meaning, though both share the identical semantic space of 'high place', and since mountains are safer than plains when you are being invaded, the extension to 'safe high place' and then to 'artificial high place' and then 'fort' is obvious.
Am I missing something? I think it's the same word.
In the case of Armenian and Greek, she notes the forms are unexpected. Greek should be **parXos (and not purgos), while she says Armenian should be **barjn (and not burgn). Some inter-IE borrowing seems to be at work.
Della Volpe also mentions tantalizing parallels in non-IE languages, Syriac burga, 'tower', and Urartian burgana- 'bulwark, fortress'. Borrowings from IE? It's easier to posit a borrowing from IE in this case that to have to explain how it shows up everywhere from Germanic and Celtic to Tocharian (and possibly Italic) and by probable borrowing, to Greek and Armenian. I think she or Adams would have mentioned an Anatolian reflex if there was one.
Again. Am I missing something?
Mark.