Direct quote, including the fiendish diacritics in the first
two sentences.
TochA nātäk (pl. nācki) 'lord', nāśi (pl. nāśśāñ) 'lady'. Greek has
generalized the variant unnatks while Tocharian has generalized unatks. Greek
forms such as (w)anakes, Dioscuri without a -t- may be back-formations from the
nominative (w)anax (<wanakts < wanatks) and/or the feminine (w)anassa
(< wanacca <*wanatkya) since the stage *-cc- would imply a masculine *-k.
(The recessive stress of (w)anassa and/or the recessive stress of the vocative.)
The shape of *unatk- looks looks rather un-Indo-European and it may betoken an
early borrowing from some unknown source. However, a root of that shape is not
totally unprecedented ... and thus may represent a purely IE inheritance.
Mark.
And what form is that?? I don't own a copy
of the EIEC, but I know a little about Tocharian and this
nâtäk thing just doesn't seem to make any sense. Does Adams
give any details or explain the correspondences?
Piotr
Douglas Q. Adams, in the Encyclopedia of
Indo-European Culture (EIEC) says it shows up in Tocharian A as natak
(macron over 1st a, umlaut over 2nd a).
Showing up in both Greek and Tocharian is
strong evidence for PIE status; Adams suggests it may be a late dialectal
term.
Mark.