Re: [TIED] Etymological Riddles (Solution: Part One)

"It is to be regretted that more than a century after the Neogrammarian breakthrough the article under discussion, which does not offer anything new and obscures both the facts and the earlier scholarly discussion of the subject, has been printed in one of the major Indo-Europeanist journals."

However, there are more examples in addition to those you quote, e.g. the 'hawk' word, reconstructible as *asU(s)tr-eNb- (< *o:k'u-ptr- 'swift flier', cf. Latin accipiter), or the infinitive of the 'bury' root *greb- (< *grebH-), which is *greb-ti > Old Polish grzes'c', Old Czech gr^esti, Russian gresti, beside OCS greti and the evidently analogical Ukrainian hrebsty, Slovene grebsti, S/Cr grepsti.

 

If the elimination of the *pt cluster took place at a time when Slavic was already disintegrating, dialectally variable treatment of a rare sound combination would not be surprising. The *tt stage need not be assumed. How about something like *pt > *[f]t > *t/*st ? I'm pretty sufe that the complex developments of *kt in Slavic must have included *xt at an early stage.

 

As for stryj, I find the connection with Latin patruus, Sanskrit pitrvya- and Old High German fatureo (< *fadurwja-) very difficult to resist. If the PIE word was *pxtr-xux-jó-s 'paternal uncle', its reduction to *p(x)truxjo- in the ancestor of Slavic would be slightly irregular but understandable in terms of dissimilation. The combination *-uxjo- was possibly syllabified *-ux.jo- > *-u:jo-. Eventually, we'd get *ptru:jos > *stryjI > stryj (but y may also derive from short *u regularly tensed before *j). Lithuanian strujus is likely to be a loan from Slavic.

 

The 'maternal uncle' word is of course *xauxjos, a derivative of *xauxos 'grandfather'. After a heavy nucleus the laryngeal was syllabified as follows: *xau.xjos > *au.jos > Common Slavic *ujI. In Polish the word acquired an onset-filling glide (*w) which has become [v]. The forms wuj and uj cooccurred in older Polish.

 

The vocalism of *pxtr-xux-jó-s suggests (to me, at least), that it is not simply a compound of *pxte:r and *hauxjos, but a derivative in *-jó- of *pxtr-xux(-o)- 'paternal grandfather'.

 

And what about the 'rain' word?

 

Piotr

 

---

 

> Hey, Piotr, what do you think about this Arumaa's statement:
>
> Im Baltisch-slavischen fehlt die grundsprachliche Wurzel fuer das Wort fuer
> Vater. Man hat sie im Woerte fr abulg. stryj 'Onkel' gesucht, was lautlich
> nicht moeglich ist (UG III, p.103).
>
> He says that one part of the researchers (Vaillant, Shevelov, J. Gunnarsson)
> invented the development pt>tt>st to explain the following words: sla.
> *strUjI, pol. stryj 'oncle',
> sla. *nestera, opol. nesciora 'sister's daughter' and
> ocs. pastorUkU, sln. pastorek 'stepson'.
>
> Arumaa points out that "ttr wie auch ttl schon in der indogermanischen
> Grundsprache zu tr, tl vereinfacht wurde, wie bereits de Saussure gezeigt
> hat" (UG II, p.140).
>
> Lep pozdrav
> Simona
>
> -----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Piotr wrote:
> >Two rather difficult riddles involving Polish words:
> >
> >(1) Short as it is, the Polish word stryj [str+j] 'paternal uncle' ([+]
> >stands for an unrounded high central vowel) is very likely related to BOTH
> >*pxte:r 'father' AND *xauxos 'grandfather'. Can anyone suggest how they
> >could be linked?
> >     If it's any help at all, 'maternal uncle' is wuj [vuj] in Polish; as
> >for the origin of Polish vowels, y < *u: and u < *au/*ou (thus also in most
> >other Slavic languages, including OCS).
> >(2) Polish deszcz 'rain' (pronounced [deStS] = "deshch") is cognate to
> >Russian doZd' and OCS dUZdI (Z = "zh"). What do these words have in common
> >with English Tuesday?
> >
> >Piotr